Fathia Davis' ears still ring with the cries of Haitians pleading for help. "I have trouble going to sleep," she said. "I hear the people screaming. I have flashbacks of what I saw."
What she saw was piles of dead bodies, waves of people with half-torn arms and legs, a sea of tents filled with newly orphaned children.
But it's what she didn't see that claws at her heart the most.
She didn't see her parents.
Davis, 42, is a nursing student at Winston-Salem State University. Five days after the earthquake struck Haiti on Jan. 12, Davis left her home in Matthews to look for her parents, Roche and Rolande Maignan, both 76. The Maignans live in the rural town of Taytein, which is about 12 miles from Port-au-Prince.
They haven't been seen or heard from since the magnitude-7 earthquake struck.
Davis has a hard time talking about her parents. For now, she clings to the belief that they are missing.
Davis is a registered nurse pursuing a bachelor of science degree in nursing to help her advance her career. She also served in the U.S. Army during the Persian Gulf War.
Davis, one of six children, was born in Connecticut but shortly afterward moved back to Haiti with her family. When she was 14, she returned to the United States to get a better education, something that was important to her parents.
On the day that the quake struck, she remembers thinking: "Dear God. The country has been in such turmoil all those years. I knew I had to get down there and search for them and be there."
Davis said she essentially designated herself to be the family member who would look for her parents, and for aunts and uncles.
She and a doctor from Carolinas Medical Center, where she works, went to Haiti on Jan. 17. Her parents' home was not damaged by the earthquake but areas around the town were badly damaged.
"It looked like a nuclear war," she said.
An area near the home became a dumping ground for dead bodies.
For hours, Davis traveled the main roads in a vehicle. When the roads came to an end, she got out and walked and talked to people who might have seen her parents.
Sometimes, word that she had medical training would spread among the survivors.
"They would grab you to ask you to fix a limb or a body part that was not repairable," Davis said.
To help cope with the grief, she volunteered to help at a hospital run by Double Harvest, a Christian mission that has a compound near Port-au-Prince. Her experience as an emergency-room nurse, coupled with her fluency in Creole and French, made her an important resource for doctors and patients.
Much of her effort there involved treating amputees and working with nongovernmental organizations to get such equipment as crutches and bedside commodes.
When she wasn't working, she returned to her parents' town to look for them.
"I had long days when it seemed I hadn't even slept," she said. "We had no concept of time."
She credits her parents for giving her strength in the face of such loss.
"We were raised to be very resilient, as far as focusing. You don't try to forget about it but you try to move on," Davis said.
Lolita Chappel-Aiken, the chairwoman of the undergraduate nursing department at WSSU, said that Davis' work in Haiti epitomizes what it means to be a nurse.
"We grieve with her and have empathy for her," Chappel-Aiken said. "But we're also very proud."
Davis will graduate in May. Her plan is to return to Haiti.
"They didn't want us to leave," she said. "They told us, ‘Don't leave us. Don't forget us. Don't abandon us.'"
lodonnell@wsjournal.com
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