By Allison Kwesell, akwesell@timesfreepress.com
JIMANI, Dominican Republic — A teary-eyed woman, frozen with pain, sat quietly in a room. All around her lay people with screws poking out of their legs, children with cardboard splints on broken arms and legs, men with mangled limbs and swollen faces.
Some are asleep, others rock back and forth in agony.
IV fluid bags hang from light bulbs, fire extinguishers and edges of windows. Medical charts are a sheet of white paper either taped above patients’ mattresses on the floor or on their chests.
Wails and crying roll out of surgical rooms and faint Haitian hymns can be heard in one hallway.