"Why aren't you going?"
Parvus, a thin woman with silky blond hair, was temporarily at a loss for words.
"Because I didn't think I could get out of work."
"You absolutely should go!" Shields said.
At 6 that evening, Parvus was in seat 9B on a US Airways flight to the Dominican Republic.
In her baggage, she carried four large boxes of medical supplies that Wills Eye had delivered to her apartment while she was packing.
Parvus was met in the airport by her father, Dirk, her sister, Candice, her brothers Matt and Chad, and Chad's partner, Tommy Davis, along with Luc Bouquet, a Haitian-born nurse practitioner.
Dirk Parvus, a family physician and director of a medical center in Vero Beach, Fla., has been building the Haiti Clinic using local health-care workers, missionary connections, and private donations. A group goes down every two months for a weekend and sees about 800 patients.
"We have no idea what we're going to find," Dirk Parvus said, leading the troop toward the two SUVs he had rented. They rustled up some twine and valiantly tied a dozen enormous bags of supplies to the roofs.
After two hours of sleep in a hotel, they drove in the dark toward the Haitian border.
Rumors proved false
Television reports had made Dirk Parvus and crew nervous. And rumors had them worried that by making this trip, they would definitely be setting themselves up for four days of misery and possibly risking their lives.
They heard that the roads were impassable and that it would take 18 hours to drive from Santo Domingo to Haiti. They heard that medical supplies would be confiscated at the border. They had visions of rotting bodies strewed on the streets and lawless rioters coming out shooting at night.
