FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - (KRT) - I remember sitting in the stranger's house, watching a ruby stream of blood trickle down my shirt from the AK-47 bullet jammed in my right shoulder.

Two scared young women were taking turns holding a towel over my wound as I leaned against their kitchen table, which was covered with dishes of rice and meat. I had just ruined their one hot meal of the day.

Now I am back in Port-Au-Prince, all in one piece, driving a dust-covered Mitsubishi SUV through crowded streets. And like a child on Christmas morning, I am giddy with anticipation. For six months my attention has been focused on returning to Haiti to fill in the blanks and say thanks.

"Uh, Michael, this is a one-way street," says Raymond Deronvil, as motorists honk their horns in protest. Raymond's expertise is guiding journalists through this poverty-stricken country. He quickly gets me in the right direction and within minutes we're heading south on Rue Lamarre ... the street where my life changed forever.

Sticking to the right curb and driving slowly, my eyes scan the street for anything familiar.

"Those steps. That's where I was shot," I say to Raymond.

Everything looks so innocent now. Little boys are sitting on those same steps watching the world pass by as their mothers peddle snacks, cigarettes and sundries nearby. Seeing them, I think of how close my own mother came to losing me.

It's March 7, and I'm covering a demonstration celebrating President Jean-Bertrand Aristide's sudden departure from Haiti a week earlier.

At the Presidential Palace, word spreads that a demonstrator has been shot a couple blocks away. In minutes the police arrive in full riot gear. They huddle together, looking for signs of Chimere, the pro-Aristide thugs.

Several of us photographers run ahead of the police to get in better position for pictures. Gunshots ring out from every direction.

Something hits my shoulder with the force of a Mack truck.

In seconds, my shirt is covered in blood.

I stop the car again after just a few yards when I see a man pointing at me.

He's standing in front of a large, green metal gate that opens onto a courtyard of houses.

"Ray, that man knows me."

He immediately comes toward me, speaking Creole, a language I know very little of despite having traveled to Haiti several times since 1991.

"Ray, what's he saying? Grab the camera."

We slap hands like two baseball players after the final out of a game, then hug in the middle of the street. I'm hesitant to squeeze because I'm not sure who this man is. But I decide this isn't a time to be guarded and I wrap my arms around his large frame.

He tells me his name is Charles Frantz. The man who invited me into his house after I was shot, disoriented and afraid. I turn numb when I realize the first time I saw Charles, he was standing in the same spot opening his gate to give shelter to a wounded stranger.

As I follow him through the gate for the second time, people are looking at me as if they're seeing a ghost. I don't even recognize their faces.

A crowd quickly gathers to see the bloody American.

I feel a dull, throbbing pain down the length of my arm.

The entrance wound in my shoulder is small, but I'm terrified. I remember hearing that exit wounds can be more damaging than entrance wounds and I worry that the bullet has gone through my back. I imagine a large gaping hole and wonder how long I can survive.

Veteran Miami Herald photographer Peter Andrew Bosch, who earlier in the day had warned me to be careful, takes control of the situation. He tells me I'm bleeding from my neck and cheek. I have been hit there, too.

"We have to stop the bleeding. Dammit, if I had my medical kit, I'd sew you up, right here, right now."

I know he isn't kidding. I am relieved he doesn't have the kit.

My alternative is a dirty blue towel a neighbor has given me. All I can think is that I hope somebody didn't just pick it up off the ground.

I hear more gunshots. This time much closer. I am not out of danger. Bosch instructs everybody to seek cover inside a nearby house.

Once again, Charles Frantz welcomes me into his home, where he lives with his wife, son and other relatives.

I apologize for intruding and putting his family in danger that day. He shrugs and explains, "That day, my house belonged to you."

Standing at the open front door, peeking around a curtain, are the two young women who nursed my injuries. Regine Clermeus and Marie Ange Christian are teenagers. Much more mature than I was at their age. I approach them, kiss their cheeks and follow with a hug. I don't want to let go.

We make our way back to their dark, meager kitchen, where I had waited for help when I was wounded. Just like in March, people are cramming in to get a glimpse of me. This time, they're smiling ear to ear. An emotional Charles belts a joyous: "Michael! Michael!"

I learn the towel I had put on my wound came from Olver Lapomarel, a neighbor who had run to his house to get it for me. Everybody laughed when he asked if he was finally going to get his towel back.

In walks the man I most wanted to see on this trip. Francois St. Juste Joseph is limping. Like me, he was shot that spring day. Unlike me, he can't afford medical care. A bullet is still lodged deep in his right hip. The last time I remember seeing him, he was lying on the floor, at the entrance to the kitchen, screaming in pain. My wound didn't compare to his.

Bosch runs in from the courtyard looking terrified and short on options.

"Michael, they're in the compound, and they've just killed a journalist. I need you to hide."

My mind is blank when I realize the two young women tending me are now hiding under the table with others.

They are crying in fear.

I'm distracted by a scream ... a man in pain.

In seconds he's crawling into the back of the house.

He has been shot in the hip. I feel an instant bond. And for a second, I consider reaching for my camera and taking his picture.

But the blaring fire of an AK-47 brings me back to reality.

Taking a picture is not a priority.

At first, Francois and I received equal treatment at the hospital ... a bandage and a chair.

He was even X-rayed immediately after me by the same doctors who told me I had no broken bones, although I later learned my shoulder blade was shattered.

Unequal treatment followed. Thanks to the persistent efforts of my boss, Tim Rasmussen, I was whisked away by a French military helicopter to an American-occupied triage unit at the Port-Au-Prince airport. Within hours I was resting at the U.S. Naval Hospital in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where I received top-notch care by some of the finest doctors I've ever met.

Francois was wheeled back to his chair in the hospital, where he remained the entire night, next to six bodies on the blood-covered floor of the emergency room. He was released around noon the next day ... having had no food, no water, no sleep.

Upon our reunion we skipped handshakes and proceeded to the hug. The hardest part of these past months has been knowing two people were shot while trying to get help for me. Francois had been standing on his own front porch.

Spanish television photographer Ricardo Ortega was the other. He had phoned officials twice to tell them of my injuries. Frustrated by a lack of response, he went outside to wait for an ambulance with Francois. He was signaling for help and filming when he was shot in the stomach.

We all shared a ride in the ambulance, but I will never be able to thank or hug Ortega. He died minutes after arriving at Canape Vert Hospital.

The ambulance turns out to be a station wagon used by the Red Cross. I am the last of four gunshot victims to climb into the back and have trouble getting my legs in so the door can close. My feet wind up in an empty side panel reserved for the jack. Before the rear door closes, a Haitian man - someone said he was a journalist - falls over on my lap. I know he is dead.

I can hear Ortega moaning. I hold his knee for the entire trip and repeat "Hang in there."

He doesn't respond. He speaks only two words when asked by a Red Cross volunteer for information. "I'm Spanish."

Those living around the courtyard erected a memorial of rocks and flowers at the spot where Ortega was shot, but somebody stole them.

I'm baffled that somebody would steal rocks.

Sitting back in a chair, Charles begins to explain that after I left in the ambulance, he and his family began receiving threats from the thugs that shot up the courtyard. "People were shouting, from outside the gate, that they were going to burn down the house because I helped the demonstrators. I had to flee, with my family, to my mother-in-law's house. We stayed there two days, then returned one by one to make sure everything was safe." Their missed meal was still on the table when they returned.

Charles believes the threats were not carried out because of the numerous radio reports saying the family was harboring journalists, not demonstrators.

I thank him once again and try to explain how sorry I am. "No! No!" Charles stops me in midsentence. Raymond is translating, "We did this with full conviction. This is the way we are. We weren't worried about our own safety. If something bad were to happen to us, then so be it." He repeats, "This is the way we are," and ends with "Life is important to us."

Just after I am shot, a man, or maybe he was an angel, grabs me by the arm and screams, "Let's go."

He is pulling on the arm that is attached to my hurt shoulder.

"Lay off," I yell, but he pays no attention.

I assume he is much more experienced in these situations than me and probably doesn't understand much English. He leads me to the green gate.

I ask my new friends - more family than friends now - if they know where I can find the man who led me to the gate.

"He's right here," says Francois. My jaw drops. Sainti Lus Joseph, the man I wasn't even sure existed outside of my own mind, is standing in the kitchen. I exhale a huge sigh of relief. Seeing Sainti Lus, my goal for this trip is complete.

I jump to my feet and grab him. "You're my guardian angel."

Without his help, I surely would have been shot again and again, until I fell. I'm beginning to learn that people here do not like to boast as I ask Sainti Lus how it feels to be a hero. He tells me a Haitian proverb. "Salt never tells anyone that it is salty. It is the tester of the salt who knows it is salty."

What he tells me next sends chills down my spine.

He saw me get shot while he was hiding inside a second-floor pharmacy along Rue Lamarre, next to the green gate. Like me, he didn't see the shooter, but he realized I was in trouble when I grabbed my shoulder. Seeing my shirt covered in blood, he raced down the steps to the street and headed toward me ... a foreigner.

He did this with the sound of automatic gunfire ringing through the street.

I discover he is not experienced with violence. "What happened marked me, because I've been living here for 20 years and that's the first time I've been victimized. Of course I've heard shots before, but never at me."

I have asked myself a hundred times if would have done the same for him.

I can't answer. I don't know.

But I do know that I would do anything for him now. For any of these people who reached out to a stranger on that day.

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© 2004 South Florida Sun-Sentinel.

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