Chapter 1
She turned to the nurse, dressed head to toe in protective equipment with a visor over her face. The only thing visible was the nurse’s eyes that seemed to speak to her, reassuring her. “Oui, je le fais.” Aiti coughed a disgusting wet cough, like a mewling cat that was having the life squeezed out of her. The nurse handed her the plastic-covered tablet, where she signed her name on the solid line.
“Wait,” she said before the nurse turned around, “Can I see Olivier?” Every time she spoke, her cough resumed. This time, it was like an oncoming train, continuing with no end in sight. Each inhalation was like swallowing daggers. She heaved a breath, her chest rising and falling, releasing a small wheeze with each breath. In through the nose and out through the mouth did nothing to help her breathe better.
“Sure.” The nurse walked through the first pair of doors that closed behind her. UV lights lit up around her for several seconds. When the UV lights turned off, the outer doors of the glass box, before leaving the industrial room, through another pair of metal doors. She returned.
Blood sprayed into the mask just as the doors opened. She wheezed as she tried to smile when she saw him. He held his IV stand in one hand as he approached her bedside in a white mask. Someone brought a chair for him to sit on beside her bed. Aiti removed the oxygen mask before wiping the blood off her mouth.
“You’re gonna recover,” said Olivier. “You’ll be just fine.”
Aiti shook her head. She was not hopeful enough to believe that she would walk out of the glass box. When she was only six or seven years old, a doctor told her that it was unlikely that she would live beyond adolescence. She was already an adult; just a few months away from turning twenty-two and a year away from graduating college. It was past her estimated expiration date. She was tired and in pain. She just wanted to rest.
As she looked at Olivier, Aiti’s eyes welled with tears as inhaled. Her breath turned into another train of bloody coughs. “Ah.. I-I love… you, too,” she finally said.
Aiti and Olivier had known each other for just almost seven months when Aiti first arrived in Paris to begin her 3rd year abroad. They were both searching for a Haitian restaurant on the streets of Paris when they met. Conversing as they ate, Aiti found out that Olivier was also of Haitian and Asian descent. Aiti was fascinated because Olivier’s mix of a Haitian father and a Singaporean mother was unheard of in her small circle of Haitian-American immigrants. She was fascinated by his family and his life experience.
Olivier, who was older than Aiti and had already been living in Paris for over a year, took it upon himself to take care of her. He showed her around the city. On the weekends, they went on trips together around Europe, from Berlin to Istanbul to Andorra and London. It was during their Christmas trip that Olivier began to realize that he was slowly falling for the 21-year-old college girl.
No. Olivier told himself. He denied his growing feelings for weeks. He was already twenty-five. She was too young for him. He was not only looking to date but looking for his future wife. He was tired of relationships that went nowhere. Aiti was still in college; he could not marry her. Olivier went to his parents for advice, especially his father, who like Aiti, was raised in Haiti before immigrating to Canada.
Olivier finally told Aiti about his feelings. “I love you.” The moment he said those words, all his anxiety left his body with a breath. Olivier did not force her to accept his feelings, giving her time to get her thoughts and feelings in order before giving him a response. Aiti returned a month later with a list of things she looked for in a partner.
They were on their first date - a traditional date consisting of dinner and a movie - when a madman decided to release the plague in the middle of the cinema. Aiti was already sick with unbearable pain when they decided to leave the theater and Olivier took her to the hospital. But, soon, she started having trouble breathing, coughing nonstop. Her X-ray showed symptoms of pneumonia, which caused the doctors to order another blood test, which showed a strain of Y. Pestis. Since Olivier was with her, he was placed in isolation and tested for Y. Pestis before being given antibiotics. His infection was caught early because he was already in the hospital. Antibiotics cleared him in less than a day, but the same could not be said for Aiti.
Aiti is the type of person who would get a cold in the summer, just because it was a bit chilly the night before. She became ill every time the seasons changed. A small infection could create a cascade of issues inside her body. A monster like the plague was ravishing her from the inside out. Fever, chills, wheezing, and bloody coughs. She could not sleep nor could she tolerate anything on her skin because she had become so sensitive that anything that touched her skin felt like the bite of a million fire ants.
She could no longer breathe for herself as her lungs grew to be filled with fluid. Not long after her family arrived in Paris from Boston, Aiti signed the release to be intubated. The nurses and doctors explained clearly that once she was placed on mechanical ventilation, there was the chance that she would not come out. But, Aiti was not afraid.
All her life, she had lived in pain. From the day she was conceived to that day, she had known pain, laughter, happiness, and love. Life was a struggle but every day she woke up made life all the more worth living. It was not just physical pain, but the psychological pain of living. It was anemia and depression that made their homes on her shoulders. And every day, she carried them along with her responsibilities as the eldest child, as a sister, and as a student. But there were some days the burdens she carried became too much and she just wanted relief. She wanted it to end.
Living with Sickle Cells Disease meant that everyday day could be her last. She was supposed to have lived her last before she turned eighteen. Had she still lived in Haiti, perhaps she would have, but her mother was already living in the United States and worked tirelessly to have Aiti immigrate to Boston for the sake of her health. Haiti had no public hospitals or health care. Every doctor’s visit and medication was paid out of pocket. The moment she stepped onto US soil, she got vaccinations, she went to see her doctor, and her medications were paid for by an insurance company. As a ten-year-old, all she understood was that when she saw the doctor, the doctor did not ask for money. She thought it was free. As an adult, she understood that health insurance was not free, but even so, it was better than Haiti.
Whether it was in Haiti or Boston, Aiti was still fragile. Boston’s fluctuating weather, from cold and wet winters, to humid and hot summers, exacerbated her illness and pushed her body to the brink. Her family of five was in the lower class and could only afford a small two-bedroom apartment with inadequate insulation. For Aiti’s sake and her new baby brother, Asher, the heater was left on through the night in the winter. She would wake up at night with pain in her joints and her abdomen, unable to breathe, and had to be rushed to the hospital, where she would spend many days until her doctors decided to release her. Medications helped keep her out of the emergency room, allowing her to live a fairly normal life.
She saw her primary care every year, and a hematologist every three months in order to manage her Sickle Cell. She saw a pulmonologist and a cardiologist also every year because her illness could affect many of her organs. The hospital reminded her that she was ill but also reminded her that she was cared for. There had to be a balance. At times, she thought of herself as a burden because of all the money her family was spending on her health, but she was still the eldest child and her parents’ only daughter. She carried their hopes and dreams. She held the responsibility to be a good daughter by being a good student who graduated high school and be the first to graduate college in her family.
But in her third year of college, while studying abroad, she became infected with pneumonic plague. Although Olivier and the other people exposed were recovering, Aiti was the only one whose constitution worsened. The Y. Pestis kept her immune cells occupied, other pathogens raided her body with no mercy. Her lungs became a battlefield, covered in the dead bodies of neutrophils and Y. Pestis. Her lungs filled with fluid, lowering the oxygen saturation, resulting in the increased sickling of her cells. The rest of her body suffered the consequences.
Her poor family could only afford two emergency plane tickets for her father and brother to see her before she would be put to sleep and intubated. It was sad but Aiti was not the type of person to hold regrets. She saw the situation as it was. And if God wished to take her from the earth, then so it would be. And if God wished to leave her on the earth, then it would be also.
Olivier was removed from the room after Aiti’s confession before the doctors entered. The anesthesiologist administered the medicine through the IV as Aiti laid back in her bed. Aiti was a pragmatist, preferring to see things as they were. She preferred the naked truth to the lie dressed in truth’s clothing. She understood that while the doctors were trying to save her life by intubating her, she also understood that there was a chance she would not recover and die while intubated. Her father and brother were present and she spoke to her mother and her youngest brother on a video call. She replied to Olivier’s feelings, telling him she loved him. What else mattered in her life?
She understood that she could die and that was okay. People die every day. It was a simple part of life. If she died, it would certainly be sad for her family, especially her parents, but Aiti was not sad about dying. She had no hopes and no regrets. As she closed her eyes as the anesthetic entered her bloodstream, she simply felt at peace.
