We think about people in Haiti right now, but we won't in a few months, as always, because we forget so easily things that completely shattered others.
It doesn't affect you if it doesn't happen to you right?
To all of those who survived the earthquakes, who lost everything when they already had nothing...
To those who survived and will never be the same again...
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Elizabeth started to scream in her bed when the floor of her apartment rumbled in the middle of the night.
She got up on her feet and ran out of her room, to finally realize that it wasn't an earthquake; it was the big snow-clearing truck that was just doing its job.
Still shaking, Liz walked back to her room, and then sat on the edge of her bed, her head leaning in her hands.
She could still see it all so clearly, feel it all, remember it all.
How stupid had she been at the time, when she had thought that it was a kind of truck like the one who she had just felt, that had made the ground grumble...
And then she had heard them scream...
She was barefooted when she had stormed out of her room, but it didn't matter, all that mattered was her instinct ordering her to run, and run and run.
And then she had seen him...
He was at the end of the hall...
"RUN LIZ!!!" he had ordered her "Run the other way!!"
And like she always did, she had listened to him, urging a couple that were cradled in the hall, screaming to follow her and to run too.
She had glanced back, to see if he was following her, but her thoughts weren't coherent anymore, and he had told her to run, so she ran, because no one knew better than him, her fearless boyfriend, the one who had convinced her to come here in the first place, for humanitarian work... The always helping hand he was...
When she finally felt the grass under her feet, outside and alive, she gasped seeing the ground, the ground that waved just like the ocean... She glanced back at the building to see the damaged and at that exact second it collapsed on itself.
And she had screamed with everyone.
All of this had taken seconds, mere seconds... but these seconds had changed everything, shattered everything, and then she had crumbled to the ground.
He was still inside... she had known it the second she had seen it...
There was no doubt in her mind... he was still inside and she was outside...
She couldn't even utter a sound when she realized what was going on.
It was like everything was miles away, and she was somewhere else, somewhere far away from here, from everything, no reality or barriers, just her and this hole that tore through her chest.
She was outside and he was inside...
She had stayed after, helped to get people out of the remains. Help them like he would have...
Every time they had moved a brick or a tile or anything, every time she had heard the complaints of someone buried under, she had hoped it was him, prayed it could be him...
But it never was...
Every night, when the ground shook slightly, the remains of the biggest one, she would get up on her feet, and run again. She slept fully clothed, always waiting for it to come back...
Doctors from DR had arrived, taking care of the wounded, amputating some, sewing up others. They tried to help but how could they save everyone when they were so unequipped when they had to use vodka to sterilize, when they didn't have medicine or even a place to put the wounded? They tried to help as much as they could but there was so much two hands could do...
But Elizabeth thought, what about us? What about those who aren't wounded outside but were inside?
Because he was still inside, and the pain was inside too...
They wouldn't find his body. It was crushed under the five concrete floors of the building.
Just like her heart...
So she had flown back. Taken a truck to drive across the borders to DR, and then flew back home.
But she felt like she was betraying those she was leaving behind, those who still had to wake up to the apocalyptic set, those who still felt the earth shake slightly at night. Those people who knew how she felt, who shared her fear, who had lost as much as she had...
They were still inside the hell while she was outside it...
Or was she really?
Elizabeth crawled back in her bed, holding her sheets tightly, her eyes full of tears.
He had stayed inside, and like the coward she was, she had run outside...
And now the pain would be inside her for ever and always...
