He spent the next four days on the street with crushed vertebrae
He called up to the Haitians gathered to point through the debris and shoot him instead. The agony of his injuries and the presence of a corpse on top of him were too much to bear.
Three hours later, the 27-year-old thought the nightmare was finally over when his brother crawled through the broken masonry to haul him out.
But Heard was given water and sent away from the one functioning clinic his family could find in Port-au-Prince, and spent the next four days resting on a wooden door on the street with crushed vertebrae and internal injuries.
His family then made the gamble that perhaps 2000 Haitians have made: to risk up to 10 hours of rugged road travel in the hope that a hospital in the relatively prosperous neighbouring Dominican Republic would help their injured loved ones.
And so, this week, pockets of Haitian agony were growing fast amid the neon casinos and glass skyscrapers of Santo Domingo.
Heard took one of Haiti's garishly bright and overcrowded "tap-tap" taxis, over jarringly eroded dirt roads to the border, and then found himself being rushed in an ambulance on modern freeways to a hospital in the capital.
The Dominican Republic secretary for foreign relations had ordered that Haitian medical emergencies be allowed in and assisted.
On Wednesday night, the wards and corridors of the Dario Contreras Hospital were clogged with about 120 injured quake survivors, including 27 children, and 100 relatives at their bedsides.
Outside, scores of other ragged Haitians queued for treatment or information on relatives. Sharply dressed Dominican pedestrians looked on in sympathy.
Similar scenes are playing out at half a dozen other hospitals in Santo Domingo, while the clinic at the small border town of Jimani has been swamped by about 1200 patients.
Said Heard: "I congratulate the Dominican Republic for helping me this way; in Port-au-Prince, people are always saying how Dominicans hate Haitians, but they have treated me with more respect than the UN.
"I have not eaten a thing for eight days. In fact, I cannot, but they are feeding me through tubes; doing everything: I am no longer in pain."
A group of orange-clad Dominicans from a spiritual charity, Sre Sathy Sai Baba, rumbled into the ward to offer dinner to all 12 people there. They had enough oatmeal, bread and apple juice for 150 people, and they cheerily wander the halls doling out the dinners to the Haitian patients. The Dominican patients don't appear to mind missing out on the extra nutrition.
Cecilia Tholenuar, 46, said most families preferred not to eat because they feared that if they went out of a ward, they would not be allowed back in.
She added: "I believe this is the first step. I think thousands, tens of thousands of ordinary Haitians will follow the sick to Santo Domingo."
Number four in a line of 10 beds in one corridor, a girl of perhaps six years old, both legs suspended in plaster, clutches a new toy rabbit as a staff member entertains her with a finger puppet. Number one, Mare Manegrat, 20, will have an operation in the morning to save her feet. Around the corner, Alexandra Perez is laughing for the first time in a week, according to her sister.
The 23-year-old survived the earthquake without a scratch, only to be brutally attacked by car-jacking gangsters four days later.
Having seen the conditions at local triage centres and even Red Cross stations, Perez's friends didn't even consider having her treated in Port-au-Prince, and simply hit the road.
But on this hospital corridor, bed number six serves as a reminder that no amount of good intention can reverse much of Haiti's damage. Thirteen-year-old Melissa Sainfa stares at the wall, paralysed for life by a massive spinal injury during the quake.
Silently holding her hand is her aunt, who has refused food and rest for three days, according to Tholenuar. Asked how she feels, the aunt, who speaks only Creole, searches about with her eyes, then grabs this reporter's arm and points out a large cardboard cut-out on the ward door behind her. It's a pink heart, with a lining of silver glitter, which is half sagging off the door because of a tear down its middle.
umhlekisi