PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti ? Fabienne Jean, a professional dancer who lost her right leg in the earthquake, hopped on her left leg through the dusty General Hospital compound on her way to a very important X-ray.

Once at the radiography clinic, Ms. Jean, 31, wearing a form-fitting black minidress with a chunky lapis-blue necklace, draped herself on the examining table like a fashion model. Then the technician entered and positioned her stump for X-rays bound for New York, where, if things worked out, Ms. Jean would be heading, too.

“Maybe my luck is changing for the better?” she said that day, more than two months after she had survived a raging deadly infection by reluctantly agreeing to an amputation.

But then began a tug of war between two health care providers over who would get to rehabilitate Ms. Jean.

Would it be the big New York hospital whose director of critical care helped save her life ? Would it be the small New England prosthetics company whose foundation has been working since to get her up and about? Or would the two organizations find a way to collaborate?

Ms. Jean, who was featured in an article in The New York Times in February, has been singled out for special opportunities because of serendipity, publicity and her potential as a symbol of Haiti’s resilience.

The New York hospital, Mount Sinai Medical Center, wants to follow through on its Haiti relief team’s involvement with Ms. Jean by offering her corrective surgery and rehabilitation in the United States.

The New England Brace Company Foundation, on the other hand, believes that Ms. Jean can and should be treated in Haiti .

For Ms. Jean, a dancer with Haiti’s National Theater, tragedy has turned into opportunity in a way that dizzies her. During the January 12 earthquake, a stone wall collapsed on her leg. For days afterward, she lay in a sea of broken bodies on the grounds of the General Hospital, where Dr. Ernest Benjamin, Mount Sinai’s director of critical care, arrived with a medical team. Ms. Jean begged Dr. Benjamin, who is Haitian-born, to save her leg . But it was too late.

Not long after her amputation, the General Hospital transferred Ms. Jean to a clinic on the outskirts of Portau- Prince.

That is when Dr. Benjamin lost track of her ? and when Dennis Acton of the New Hampshire group found her in a place he described as a kind of “squalid homeless shelter for amputees.”

Moved, Mr. Acton promised to help Ms. Jean walk ? and dance ? again. “Fabienne has a great attitude,” he said. “I figured she would be a strong patient who could get back on her feet quickly and be a positive role model to other amputees.”

At the same time, Dr. Benjamin, finding Ms. Jean again through the Times article, proposed that Mount Sinai bring her to the United States to continue her treatment.

Learning of Mount Sinai’s initiative, Mr. Acton was initially upset because he had just been counseled by disability experts in Port-au-Prince that their guidelines advocate that Haitians be treated in Haiti.

Doctors at Mount Sinai say Ms. Jean needs additional surgery before rehabilitation. While Ms. Jean could get such surgery in Haiti, resources are stretched thin, and Mount Sinai is offering her “world-class” medical treatment and rehabilitation, Dr. Benjamin said.

Mr. Acton hesitantly agreed that going to New York might be in Ms. Jean’s best interest. He wrote an e-mail message in March that he had initially been “defensive (and maybe a little jealous?)” but that “Fabienne will never get the care she needs in Haiti.”

In the end, Mount Sinai decided to keep pursuing permission for Ms. Jean to enter the United States. Separately, Mr. Acton prepared to travel to Haiti with her new limb.

And, in the middle, Ms. Jean does not want to take sides. But she does want to go to New York for treatment .

She said in Creole: “I want to! I want to! I want to!”


By DEBORAH SONTAG


PHOTOGRAPHS BY DAMON WINTER/THE NEW YORK TIMES


Fabienne Jean, at left being carried outside a Port-au-Prince hospital, found herself in a tug of war between a New York medical center and a prosthetics company.