The student nurses and the three nurse graduates (one of whom was Rigan) had begun tending the injured in the short span of daylight between 5 and 5:30 the night of the earthquake - 1.12.2010. Today, there were already hundreds waiting for care. “What do you need Michele, I will try to find it?”: Rigan – where did he find that box of gloves, more providone-iodine and I didn’t know what we were going to do with that box of nursing breast pads he found, but I was sure they would be put to use? 

Rigan speaks perfect English – we work together side-by-side to clean, dress, splint and do all that we can for the horrific crushing injuries that we see. He is my strength, he interprets for me, he tells me ‘shish, don’t cry Michele, I am not crying, we will work together’. Rigan wants to change Haiti – to help her people – to make a difference. He is engaged to a beautiful American, Lisa – who is in nursing school in Minnesota. She wants to come and help Rigan, the children of the orphanage that Rigan works with and to help provide care to the beautiful people of Haiti. 

Rigan is kind, patient and one of the truest leaders I have met in my 34 years as a professional nurse. He has nowhere to sleep or bathe except on the school grounds with the school’s 50 or so student nurses and the four graduate nurses. He doesn’t eat all day, I never see him drink water, he works with me from 5 every morning until the light from our only flashlight – a little Maglight that I brought on the trip – is swallowed-up by the darkness of moonless night. 

He helps everyone he can tirelessly. His skill and knowledge are beyond reproach. He is a master at suturing, at communication, at calming, at nurturing. He is a master scavenger, finding our limited supplies as if by magic. When we find gangrene and maggots in macerated tissue, he steps in and says, “Michele, let me do it, it is so hard – I will do it”. Even as I know that his heart is broken – he lost his dear friend – the President of the FSIL’s nursing class – a woman I imagine was a great deal like him – he doesn’t let his fear, sadness and despair keep him from his exceptional work; an extraordinary leader in an unlikely and extraordinarily difficult situation. 

To explain to you the bond, the respect, the admiration and the love that I feel for this young nurse I would need words beyond my level of literacy. With a vocabulary that is inadequate, let me try to introduce to you what a real hero is, what a true leader is, what an exceptional nurse and human being is: Rigan. 

My dear Rigan, no one but you & I will ever know the bond of nursing, of care and of friendship that we shared in those first horrible days after the earthquake, but I will do all that I can to shine a light on your story and on the story of nursing – of care that so heroically and unselfishly improved and forever impacted the lives of the people of Léogâne – the people of Haiti – people of our world. 

God bless my dear, dear friend – my Haitian son. You own a piece of my heart that will never be lost to time. I hope that, one day, I might become the kind of nurse and the quality of person that I saw in you….