20/12/2009
Atlantic Ocean
30,000 feet high.
Twelve years have passed since that fateful day, but Benedito still remembers that day, that occasion, with amazing vividness. His father and mother, Benedito who was still five years old that year, were returning from a trip through Europe after a great discovery of his father's for paleontology. His father, Joseph Bien-Aime, had discovered a new species of dinosaur in South America, in the Amazon, Colombia.
It was a dinosaur from the Cretaceous period, and with this unprecedented discovery, his father was rewarded with money and a trip to the Senckenberg museum of natural history in Germany, and also to the dinosaur museum of Espéraza, located in the upper Aude valley, which houses the largest dinosaur deposit in France.
Joseph was on cloud nine, and Benedito, who was still a child, had never had so much fun seeing so many different dinosaur fossils. Only Benedito's mother, Anna, was not so happy about this trip. Anna was a neurosurgeon, and her vacation days would be spent seeing creatures that died several million years ago. How could she be happy about this? The only bright side of this whole trip, is that she was able to see and enjoy several different regions of Europe, thus fulfilling a dream from her childhood.
Benedito's family was strange and somewhat confusing. Anna was Brazilian, and met Joseph, who is Haitian, and a trip to Florida, where both were going to a medical conference, about the new studies and discoveries in the field of neuroscience, and a dinosaur exhibit respectively. From the stories that Benedito heard from his parents several times, it was love at first sight.
Anna was a gentle looking woman with a black skin color, with black eyes and curly hair. She was 5'6" tall, and despite her size, when she was angry, she could curse better than a six foot tall sailor.
Joseph was the complete opposite of Anna. Joseph didn't usually care much about his appearance, always with an unshaven beard and big hair, there were times when he even forgot to put his pants on before leaving the house. As a Haitian man, Joseph had black skin and dark eyes, carrying great traces of his African ancestry.
Because both of his parents were black, there was no way Benedito could be a white person, right? Benedito was born in the United States, and there he lived all of his first five years of life. But after the European trip, Joseph suggested that the Bien-Aime family go to Haiti, to visit Benedito's grandparents, to spend Christmas and New Year's with Joseph's parents. Anna and Benedito had nothing against this idea, and so they took a plane to Haiti's capital, Port-Au-Prince.
It was then that that fateful day arrived. Because he was still a child, Benedito could not stand the long travel time, and fell asleep just before boarding the plane. But he could not forget the terror, the fear, the despair he felt on 12/20/2009.
"Benedito! Benedito, my beloved son, please wake up!" Benedito heard the trembling voice of his mother.
Opening his eyes with great difficulty thanks to his sleep, Benedito noticed that the plane was very hot, and people were screaming in despair, while the flight attendants were trying to calm people down. His father, Joseph, was holding him tightly in his hands, as if he feared that he would disappear at any moment.
"Benedito, my love, pay close attention to Mama. Mama wants you to put on this mask, and only take it off when Mama tells you to, okay?" Anna said in a shaky voice as she held back the crying and fear stuck in her throat.
Benedito grabbed his mother with one hand, and with the other hand held tightly onto his father's arm, as he slowly began to feel desperate and breathless with pure panic. His little body was beginning to tremble, and he could already feel the tears forming in his eyes.
"Écoutez-moi, Benedito. Je veux que tu sois forte, et que tu écoutes tout ce que ta mère te dit.(Listen to me, Benedito. I want you to be strong, and listen to everything your mother says.)" Joseph said in French, trying to calm the growing panic in Benedito.
Benedito could only rigidly nod his head in response.
"Você é um garoto forte, não é, meu amor? (You are a strong boy, aren't you, my love?)" Anna said in Portuguese with a smile.
Benedito could only smile stiffly in response.
Anna and Joseph each put on an oxygen mask and prayed. Benedito's mother and father were very religious people, fervent Catholics who never doubted the power of the father, the grace of the holy spirit, and the salvation of Jesus Christ.
"The eternal God is his refuge,
and to hold him
are the everlasting arms.
He will drive out the enemies
from his presence,
saying, 'Destroy them!' Deuteronomy 33:27" Joseph recited his favorite verse from the Holy Bible, trying to calm his turbulent mind.
"The Lord is my light and my salvation;
of whom shall I be afraid?
The Lord is my strong refuge;
of whom shall I be afraid? When evil men come against me
to destroy me,
they, my enemies and my adversaries
shall stumble and fall. Though an army encamp against me
my heart shall not fear;
though war be declared against me,
yet will I be confident.
Psalms 27:1-3" Anna recited the verse that always gave her strength when she felt overwhelmed.
Hearing the muffled voices of his parents through the oxygen masks, Benedito decided to follow suit and recite a verse and a prayer to the God of heaven.
"Genesis 3:19
Verse Concepts
In the sweat of your face you shall eat your bread, until you return to the earth; for out of it you were taken; for dust you are, and to dust you shall return." Benedito is not sure why, but that was the verse that came to his mind.
After this event, Benedito doesn't remember much, only a big bang, and he felt his body being whipped by the wind, as if the heavens themselves came to claim his body as the property of the winds.
*****************
Benedito only managed to regain consciousness on January 2, 2010, and he still remembers all the pain and despair he felt that day. He woke up in a hospital. Still frightened, Benedito woke up screaming, and with a jump he tried to get out of bed to look for his parents. And that's when he felt so afraid, so hopeless, that his little heart almost stopped, literally.
Benedito fell to the floor as he tried to stand up on his left leg. With a little light coming through the gaps in the closed window, the sun's rays illuminated his small body, making his black skin glow a little with golden light, like the son of a god who has come down to earth.
Looking at his left leg... or rather at the absence of his left leg, Benedito's eyes widened in complete and utter disbelief. His left leg, from mid-thigh down, had completely disappeared. Benedito looked down at his body, and found himself riddled with bandages, with some wires in his body, such as wire going to the heart rate monitor, a needle in his arm for the IV, etc.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH"
Benedito could stand it no longer, and succumbed to fear and despair. Perhaps because his brain activity was incredibly high after his awakening, the painkillers and medication in his bloodstream were no longer taking effect, causing him to feel the full pain of the wounds in his body, and the imaginary pain coming from his left leg was exceptionally terrifying.
He curled up on the floor, with all the wires that were keeping him alive and stable falling out of his body, Benedito curled up in a fetal position, rolling on the floor in pain and screaming at the top of his lungs. Soon, residents and nurses entered the room, with needles and other equipment that Benedito had no time to see, as he soon fell asleep once again.
This cycle repeated itself several times, until on January 6, Anna was there when Benedito woke up.
"M-mama!" Benedito screamed and wanted to throw himself into his mother's lap.
Anna was in a wheelchair, and had as many bandages, if not more, than Benedito on her body. But, as if her body was completely fine, she with one swift advance prevented her son from getting out of bed, and she lay down beside her little treasure. She listened to his cries, of how it hurt and how afraid he was. She listened to his complaints and his sincere desire to go home.
As she listened to all of her son's complaints, silent tears fell like a waterfall from Anna's eyes as she continued to hug and comfort her son. Now, what mother would wish to see her child hurt, scared, and afraid? What mother would wish to see her little child who was healthy as a bull, lose a leg? Anna was simply broken, and all that was left for her was to try to rebuild herself and her son.
"Maman, where is the pope?" Benedito asked in English, but with a strong French accent.
Perhaps because of his greater proximity to Joseph's family, even though they lived in the United States, Benedito always found it easier to speak French, Joseph's native language, than to speak Portuguese, Anna's native language, or to speak in English.
Anna felt her heart tighten at that moment, and the willpower she had to exert to keep the tears from coming down was such that she was sure she had never asked for God's help more than at that moment.
"Your father...your father is...he will be busy for these days. A lot of people got hurt, so he went to ask God that He would help us." Anna told a lie, and she didn't know whether it was more painful to lie to her son about where Joseph was or to tell the truth.
It took some time for Benedito to calm down, and it wasn't until January 10, 2010, that Benedito began to leave the hospital room, accepting his life once again. But fate is a bitch, and disaster fell upon this family once again, in one of the biggest disasters that ever fell under Haiti, and one of the biggest disasters in Central America.
On January 12, 2010, one of the biggest earthquakes this world has ever seen, fell in Haiti. An earthquake with a magnitude of 7.3 on the Richter scale, killed more than 230,000 people and displaced more than half a million people.
And at the epicenter of all this disaster, Anna, a respected doctor tried her best to help as many people as possible, while simultaneously trying to save Benedito, who was buried in the rubble of the collapsed hospital.
"Benedito! *Cough cough*"
While coughing and crying out and calling desperately for her son, Anna was performing a heart massage on a man, whose heart had just stopped beating. Everything around Anna was destroyed, the late tremors of the earthquake were still affecting Haiti's capital, and the sound of buildings falling and people screaming for help was simply deafening.
Meanwhile, buried by more than three meters of rubble, Benedito, this tragic little child, was in a state between consciousness and a total lack of senses. He felt as if he was sleeping, but every time he tried to close his eyes to completely fall asleep, an overwhelming pain that filled every part of his body took over, making it impossible to completely fall asleep.
Just then, someone, with an ethereal voice spoke to Benedito at that moment, causing his hazy consciousness to gain some clarity.
"Poor soul... ah, how I wish I could help you." The voice said.
The voice was so strange, Benedito could not identify whether this voice was male or female, but one thing was certain; this voice carried that maternal feeling, that he wished to care about, the same feeling that Anna's voice carried.
"Pouvez-Vous m'aider? (Can you help me?)" Benedito asked, with great difficulty.
"Perhaps, child. It depends entirely on your wish." The voice answered.
It was at that moment that Benedito noticed, that the language the voice spoke, did not sound like anything he had ever heard in his life, but still, he could understand perfectly everything that was said.
"Je veux que la douleur s'en aille, pour toujours. Je ne veux plus jamais avoir mal. (I want the pain to go away, forever. I don't want to feel pain ever again.)" Despite the weakness and death approaching with every moment, Benedito spoke his words with conviction.
"I can do this child, but will you pay the price?" The voice asked back.
"Oui ! (Yes!)" Benedito replied with as much conviction as he could muster.
"So it has been said, and so it shall be." The voice seemed to blend with all the sounds in the environment, and Benedito finally could stand it no longer, and his mind fell into the void of unconsciousness.