by Dianne Drake
“Dani,” Lorna said, dropping down next to her. “Can you tell me where it hurts?”
“Pelvis,” she managed. “Legs.” She bit her lip and sucked in a sharp breath. “Back.”
Lorna immediately felt for a pulse. Weak and thready. Dani was also cold and pale. “Does it hurt to breathe?” she asked.
“Breathing’s OK. Find Dag. Please, find Dag.”
Lorna looked up at Richard, who shrugged. “We’ll take care of him,” she whispered, as she gently pulled back Dani’s eyelids for a look. Everything there was fine, no apparent head trauma. But after taking a blood-pressure reading…it was so low it was almost not readable. And Dani’s belly…what had been flat was now distended, and tight. Internal bleeding!
“Tell Tom I didn’t find anybody,” Dani managed. “Not in the front part. Didn’t get in, though. Maybe he’ll have better luck from the rear…” She took in a breath, coughed, and shuddered. “Tell him to find Dag,” she choked.
“But Tom—” Lorna started to say. Richard laid a warning hand on her shoulder before she could finish, though, and Lorna instantly understood. Dani didn’t know Tom was missing. “As soon as he comes back down,” Lorna continued, “I’ll tell Tom as soon as he comes back down.”
“Is it bad?” Dani asked. She gasped and shuddered again as a stab of pain shot through her, then she reached for Lorna’s hand. “Am I going to…?”
“It’s bad, but you’re going to be fine.” Lorna kept hold of Dani’s hand, and with her other hand ran her fingers lightly over Dani’s muddy slacks. Thank God there was no bone protruding. That much was good. If her legs were broken, which they probably were, at least the breaks were closed, and there was no risk of infection. She did the same exam for Dani’s pelvis. To the touch, there was nothing to discover. But touch didn’t diagnosis a fracture, and Lorna suspected that, like Dani’s legs, her pelvis was also fractured as it had taken the brunt of the blunt force from the falling wood. “Can you wiggle your toes for me?” she asked, motioning for Richard to remove Dani’s shoes. When he did, Lorna finally had to let go of Dani’s hand to rummage though the medical kit to see what kind of painkiller she had in there. For Dani, the trip out of there would be as brutal as the injury itself, and without a little something to take the edge off, she was afraid Dani would go into shock. With internal bleeding, that could well prove to be fatal.
“I don’t think I’m paralyzed,” Dani forced out. The effort in her voice was becoming more pronounced as the minutes passed. “I still feel some movement…” She braced herself, bit her lips, and moved both her ankles in circles.
“Good,” Lorna whispered.
“But I’m not going to dance any time soon?” Dani whispered, fighting to stay brave as the pain was increasing. “Tom will be disappointed. He promised to take me dancing in Rio once we get out of the mud.”
Lorna glanced up at Richard just as he bit his lower lip and shut his eyes. “I think you’re going to be watching the dancing for a while,” she said.
Dani’s injury was finally coming down on her now, and her eyes were fluttering shut. “Tell Tom to take care of Dag,” she whispered. “Tell him I still want that dance he promised.”
“Can you take morphine?” Lorna asked.
Dani didn’t answer, so Lorna gave her a gentle shake. “Dani,” she said. “Morphine?”
Dani nodded, and let out an exhausted breath.
She was gone for a while, but maybe it was for the best, Lorna thought as she drew the liquid from the vial and gave Dani the shot. There wasn’t much else to do there, and if she did wake up, the morphine wouldn’t take away all the pain, but it would help. “We need transport to get her out,” she told Richard, “And she’s going to need an airlift to the nearest trauma center, stat. Internal bleeding and other injuries. We don’t have a lot of time.” She reached to take Dani’s pulse, then looked up at him. “What about Tom?”
“He was on the other side of the building when it went down. That’s all I can tell you.” He twisted, and waved. “Gideon!” he shouted. “Up here.”
Gideon was on his way? Lorna spun around, glad to see him trudging up the muddy trail. “She’s bad, but stable enough for transport,” she said once he’d reached them. “Internal bleeding, crushed pelvis, possible legs. We need to get her out of here right away.”
He looked at the collapsed school, and didn’t ask what happened. “Tom?”
Richard shrugged. “Haven’t seen him for a while. He was on the back side.”
Gideon bent down and took Dani’s hand. “We’ve got the team on the way up right now, and we’ll have you out of here in just a little while. You hold on, Dani. You hear me? You hold on.” As he said the words, Brian rushed up the trail. “You and Lorna get her back,” Gideon said to him. “Richard and I will join up with Tom.”
“I’m not going back,” Lorna said stubbornly. “And don’t pull rank, Gideon. I’m not part of your team.” She understood why he wanted to send her back—the next minutes were critical and she wasn’t trained like the others were—but she didn’t agree. This was her rescue, she wanted to see it through.
Instead of arguing, Gideon merely nodded. “Fine. But you do what I tell you to. It’s not negotiable, Lorna.”
Before she could reply, he’d signaled Richard to help Brian take Dani down, then started up and around to the rear of the collapsed structure. By the time she caught up with him, Gideon had stopped and was simply staring at the remains. No sign of Tom. No sign of Dag. “Tom!” he yelled. “Tom, can you hear me?”
“Would he go in by himself?” Lorna asked. Gideon would have, but Tom?
“Yeah, he would. He reminds me a lot of—”
“You?” she interrupted.
“Unfortunately.” His voice was oddly flat as he pulled out his radio. “Priscilla, bring up the dogs,” he said, then turned to Lorna. “I’m going up higher to take a look around. I don’t have a good vantage point here, and there’s a possibility Tom did see something further up that he went after. Stay here, OK? Scout the immediate area, keep in contact. And, Lorn, don’t take any risks.” He bent forward and gave her a light kiss on her muddy, scratched cheek. “Because in that regard, you remind me of me, too.” He signaled one of the volunteers over to accompany him, and started his upward climb.
“You take care, too, Gideon,” she called after him.
Lorna watched as he continued up the face of the mountain, then when he’d disappeared over a knoll, she called one of the volunteers to join her—the one called Monty. Together, they started to search the area. “Tom! Can you hear me? Can you give me some indication of where you are?”
Nothing. So while Monty moved around to the side, Lorna moved closer to rear of the collapsed structure. Called. Listened. Nothing, again. “Monty, anything?”
“Nothing!” he replied.
She’d hoped, but…well, maybe Tom hadn’t gone inside. Or maybe, unlike last night when she’d spent the night sitting with Ana Flavia, who’d been talkative, he couldn’t respond or wasn’t in a place where she could hear him. She refused to think about the scenario fighting to fill her mind. Slowly, Lorna made her way around the perimeter of the fallen structure, looking, listening, hoping for any sign of life in the heap of tangled, broken wood. When she came up to the far side and met up with Monty who’d made his way around, she saw a large gap between the ground and the debris. Large enough to crawl through. Or at least, large enough to wedge herself into the opening and call again. “What do you think?” she asked him.
“I think we wait for Gideon.”
Logical, but frustrating. Too much time wasted, especially if Tom was in a critical situation. Without so much as a thought about it, Lorna dropped to her knees, then flat on her belly, and wiggled into the dark hole, pushing her medical kit along in front of her. “Tom,” she called, only a few feet in. “Help is on the way. If you can hear me…”
“Lorna!” Gideon yelled from behind, on his way back to the site. “It’s not
secured.”
“And I’m not going in all the way.” She turned to look at him. “He wouldn’t have wandered so far away, Gideon,” she said. “This was where he was searching. Not any place else. He’s got to be in here!”
“I know.”
Gideon sounded despondent, and the pain in those two words was so evident her heart clutched. The reality here wasn’t good. Gideon knew it. She knew it. And the group of volunteers mixed with Gideon’s team, all of them making their way up to the area to join in the search now, knew it. “Then you know somebody’s got to go in. I’m the only one who’s small enough, except Priscilla, and she needs to be out with Philo.”
“I know that, too. But you’re not qualified.”
“And you’re not going to stop me, are you? Put yourself in my place, Gideon. What would you do?”
He shook his head, then dropped to his knees behind Lorna and shone a torch into the dark opening. When he did that, Lorna wiggled out of the opening space, snatched the hard hat off Gideon’s head and slung her rucksack back into the opening, to push ahead of her. “I’m not stupid, Gideon. If it looks bad, I won’t go there.”
“You’re not the same as you used to be,” he said, reaching up to turn on the safety light on top of her hat.
She smiled. “Is that a compliment?”
“Maybe. The Lorna I remember wouldn’t have done this. She wouldn’t have put on the hard hat and crawled anywhere on her belly.” A soft smile curved across his lips. “I’m proud of you, Lorna,” he whispered.
Words she would have loved hearing years ago. “It’s mutual, Gideon. What you do…I’m proud of you, too.” She looked deep into his eyes and what she saw there was the Gideon she’d first known—the one who’d existed before the weight of their individual worlds had come crashing in on them, the Gideon she would have stayed married to for ever. She blinked, trying to shake off the bitter-sweet spell coming over her. “So, tell me what to do.”
He blinked, too, perhaps trying to rid himself of that same bitter-sweet feeling. “It’s stable enough. I’ve had a good enough look to know it’s not going to come down on you if you’re careful inside. So, first, you’re not going to get in too far. The middle of the structure has collapsed all the way down, but there’s more clearance around the edges, which is where you need to keep to. Don’t bump any of the boards along the way, and if anything shifts, get the hell out. Don’t take any chances, Lorn.”
“You almost sound like you care,” she said, dropping to her hands and knees then crawling back to the opening. Once there, she slid on in on her belly.
“Maybe I almost do,” he said under his breath.
“I heard that,” Lorna called back. More than that, her heart felt it.
Inside, within seconds, Lorna’s marginally lighted entrance turned into a dark chamber, illuminated only by the narrow beam coming off Gideon’s hat. It was a cold, shadowy world in there, with the mud under her belly and her back mere inches from rubbing across what she assumed to be the school ceiling.
“Lorna,” Gideon called from outside. “Anything? Can you see anything?”
Nothing that she wanted to see, like Tom sitting there waiting for someone to reach him. Or Dag, doing the same. “No, not yet,” she yelled, as she shoved her medical sack in front of her and continued to squirm along on her belly like a worm. Every few feet she stopped and turned her head so the beam would cover the area, hoping to find…well, she wasn’t sure what. A survivor, definitely. Or no one in there at all. “Tom,” she called out. “Tom, can you hear me?”
No answer. So she moved on. Stopped some way down, repeated the process, then moved further in.
By the time she reached a little more open expanse, where she could push up to her knees, it seemed like she’d been crawling for ever. A quick punch on the light-up button on her watch revealed seven minutes in. And she was already exhausted, and sweating so hard she was having cold chills. “Tom, are you in here? Is anybody in here?”
She held her breath and listened for a second. Nothing…nothing…then suddenly a faint scratching. Was it Tom, or one of the children? Or only a rat moving into his new digs for the duration? “Hello,” she called out. “Is there anybody in here?”
She waited, and again she heard a faint scratching. This time she pulled her torch from her rucksack and shone it back and forth. But there was nothing to see, except more of the wreckage. Still, she couldn’t shake the feeling that she wasn’t the only one in there.
“Lorna!”
Gideon’s voice was distant. She wanted to call out to him, but somehow, deep into this hollow cavern, that didn’t feel right. Would a vibration from a loud voice rock more of the debris loose? Suddenly, she remembered the two-way radio, and fished in her pocket to find it. “Hello,” she practically whispered. “Can anybody hear me?”
“Lorna?”
It was Gideon’s voice again.
“Are you OK? Do you see anything?”
It was nice to hear his voice. After all these years, she’d never expected to think that. But right now there was no one in the world she trusted more than Gideon to get her through this. “Nothing,” she replied. “I’ve still got some room to go forward, but not much. And I’m fine.”
“Look, I’ve got more volunteers out now, looking for Tom. No sign of him anywhere out here.”
Which meant he was, most likely, in there. As both she and Gideon had thought. “I’ll keep looking,” she said. Stuffing the two-way radio in her rucksack, Lorna pushed forward, half crawling, half sliding on her belly, until she could see a solid obstacle. She wasn’t quite sure what it was. A wall, perhaps? Just a pile of debris? On impulse, she began to crawl in that direction and after a few feet two eyes glowed out of the dark at her. “Dag?” she ventured.
The dog whimpered, but made no attempt to get up.
“Good boy,” she said, moving towards him. It was hard to tell what he was doing, but from his pose he looked to be lying over something…guarding it. “Tom? Is that you?”
In answer, Dag whimpered again. This time, a cold chill shot up Lorna’s spine. Dag wasn’t alone. “It’s OK, boy. I’m on my way.”
It took another few minutes before Lorna reached the dog, and when she did she found what she’d expected. Crawling up alongside Tom and pushing herself to her knees, Lorna’s fingers immediately went to his pulse, but she retracted them in a split second, and raised them into the light from her hat.
Blood.
Grabbing her torch, she shone it down into the cold, lifeless face of Tom McCain. Dead from a crushed windpipe. Guarded faithfully by a rescue dog who understood the sad verdict.
And under Tom…” Hello,” she said to Dag’s other charge. At first, Lorna couldn’t tell if the child was a boy or girl. But as she rolled Tom’s body to the side and pulled the child over to her, she saw a muddy pink ribbon in her hair. Fingers to the little girl’s pulse found a nice steady one. Respirations were even, no sign of bleeding or other trauma. She was awake, too frightened to speak, and blessedly alive. Injuries, if any, to be determined later, Lorna decided as she pulled a disposable thermal blanket from the rucksack and wrapped it around the child.
Then she clicked on the two-way radio. “Two survivors,” she said. “Dag, and a child.” She paused for a moment. This was the part she hated. Clicking back on, she drew in a deep breath. “I’m sorry, Gideon. Tom didn’t make it.”
What she heard on the other end was a gasp, then a choke.
What she saw in her mind was the look on Gideon’s face.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“SHE’S doing fine,” Gideon said, sitting down next to Lorna in the hospital tent. He was referring to the child Lorna had found in the school. Maria, they were calling her for now. “She’s still a little shocky, but after what she’s been through, she’s doing amazingly well. No injuries except a few scrapes and bruises. Jason’s taking care of her right now, and Priscilla’s already taking pictures, getting them ready to send out to the lo
cal authorities in case someone from her family doesn’t come around soon.”
There was a sad mood hanging over base camp. No one was saying much, no one even mentioning Tom’s name. But the looks on the faces…They were a close group, and the pain was pronounced. Yet they carried on. Each to his own job. Nothing stopped.
But everything had slowed down for a while. And there was a common bond in this sorrow between these people…one she didn’t know, one she didn’t feel. They grieved together while she grieved alone. She envied them that bond, that community of strength and feeling and care. They’d accepted her, and she’d even felt a part of them. But now she wasn’t. It wasn’t in anything they said or did, wasn’t in a passing glance or even an avoidance. It was simply who they were and what they were, and who and what she was not.
“Tom had protected her with his body,” Lorna said. Grasping a coffee-mug with both hands, Lorna tried to lift it to her lips but her hands were shaking too hard, so she lowered it to set it aside on the wooden crate next to the one on which she was sitting. But Gideon reached over and steadied the mug with his hands, allowing her to take a sip of the coffee. She needed the warmth to cut through the deep chill that wasn’t going away, even though she’d been out of that collapsed structure almost an hour now. “Do they blame me?” she asked.
“For what?”
“For not saving him?”
“We don’t blame, Lorna. Nobody blames anyone.”
“They’re all avoiding me. Even Priscilla. I’d thought…” Thought that maybe Priscilla had become a friend. “I’ve been pretty arrogant, haven’t I? Just going out on the rescues, acting like I’m one of the team. That’s been arrogant, and they resent that.”
“No, Lorna. It’s not you. We were the one who put you in the position to begin with. And what you’re seeing now is a heartbreak reaction…we’ve never lost anybody on a rescue before and we’re just dealing with it the best way we can. They’re turning to each other, to the people they know, and you’re the outsider. It’s natural at a time like this, and I think they’re a little afraid you and your camera will intrude on their grief.”