Over a week ago, a baby I love very much, Patricia, died suddenly. I started writing out Patricia's story because I think it's important. Her life mattered.
I wrote chapter 1 a few days ago. You can read it here-- Chapter 1: This is hell.
Here's the next part. (I am not trying to keep you in suspense. It's just a long story and I can't process it all at once.)
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Chapter 2: The Morgue
We started out on the short trip to St. Michel, the local public hospital. Ironically, (and you'll see what I mean in a second,) the hospital is nicknamed by locals, "the morgue" because of the horrific conditions. On the way I called Nick to tell him what had happened. We was in the US for a Board Meeting and we'd had a big fight a few minutes earlier. Suddenly our "problems" didn't seem so big.
I started off the conversation by apologizing and then, sobbing saying, "Anyway, it doesn't matter because I am driving Patricia's dead body to the morgue." Yeah, not so tactful, I know, but I wasn't really in a good state of mind. And besides, Nick is one of those people who I can really cut to the chase with. I can just be me. That was a very good thing for me at this point. He knew how much Patricia meant to me. I remember trying to talk to him on the phone, cry, shift the car, clear the fog from the windshield, and wipe my glasses dry. I had nothing dry to dry them on--so they just stayed all steamy and streaky. (Of all the days I didn't wear contacts.)
We arrived at St. Michel and the whole group of us paraded in shoeless and walked around trying to find someone to talk to. Hugues was still carrying Patricia. Lots of patients were there but we didn't see any doctors or administrators. This hospital had been taken over by Doctors Without Borders last month. I was so pissed off when I couldn't find anyone to talk to. I muttered out loud again. This time I said, "Doctors Without Borders my ASS!" (Sorry for the swear word, that's actually what I said.) I was here with Patricia just a few weeks earlier and all I could think about was how they didn't care for Patricia when she was brought there alive, why would I expect more in her death? We finally headed over to the pharmacy to try to get more information. They looked at us as if we were crazy when we walked in there with a dead baby. They said it had nothing to do with them and that we’d need to talk to the hospital administration. So we headed over there.
Hugues passed Patricia off to a family member and went in to talk to them. I followed. Hugues told me to wait outside but I didn't listen to him. I knew that we had a better chance of being listened to if a white person came in. It sounds ridiculous to say that, but it's true. It's VERY true. But it turned out that it didn’t matter because they didn’t have any place to put her. We were told that ever since the earthquake the morgue there was not operational, so bodies were the responsibility of the family. (Remember, this is the only PUBLIC free hospital in Jacmel. LOTS of bodies since the quake. The UN estimates 3,000 or so.)
I couldn’t send Patricia back to the mud hell of Pinchinat so I asked Hugues if she could tell me which private morgue he thought we should use. I told him I would take care of paying for it, but I wasn’t sending her back to Pinchinat no matter what. The family heard about what we were talking about and jumped in. They insisted that she should not be brought to the morgue. She was too little of a baby for that kind of cost. Instead they asked if I would help pay for the coffin, which they had already commissioned and then we would just get her buried. Of course I said yes. We piled back in the truck and were off to check on the progress of the coffin.
