by Margaret Way
Swinging himself around, he stepped down onto the first rung of the ladder. He worked his way down, feeling his way with his feet, getting a solid grip before moving his foot to the next rung, looking anywhere but back up to the surface where he knew his dad was watching him. Lower still—what was he, five metres down?—the walls of the narrow shaft changed colour again until finally the dark closed in around him and he looked down to see what was beneath him. The light was powerful but he couldn’t see anything much down the narrow shaft. As he reached his foot down to feel for the next rung, he felt the support give way beneath him. For a spilt second he panicked until he realised the wooden ladder had come to an end and a rope ladder had been attached.
He kept moving, with more care now as the flexible rope was harder to negotiate. Past narrow openings picked into the walls here and there, wherever Old Jimmy would have decided he could “smell” the opal and started to gouge with a small pick to work away at the dirt and rock.
Matt looked up and saw the small circle of natural light above him and at the same moment his feet struck against solid rock and he realised the vertical shaft had ended and now ran off in the narrowest of tunnels on the horizontal. Old Jimmy must have struck a seam of what he was convinced was a sure prospect for an opal-bearing pocket of rock and taken his digging in that direction.
He crawled into the tunnel, knowing it would widen slightly in the places Jimmy “smelt” the opal. Where the tunnel was simply a means to take him further into the rock, it would be as narrow as possible. Labour-saving, yes, but making it a damn sight harder at times like this.
As he crawled into the tunnel, he saw the first evidence of the collapse. Only a couple of metres away, just where the tunnel widened a little, two beams had come loose from the basic ceiling props and had fallen across each other, one end of each still attached to the roof. They crossed over at the ground, forming a gate with only a narrow opening. He crawled up to it and squatted back on his heels and took stock. This must be where his dad had stopped. There was no way he could have squeezed through that gap. The question now was, could he?
He tipped his head back, the light from his head-lamp illuminating the top of the tunnel. The beams had come down but so far the rocky roof was holding. So far. It could come down at any minute, but if he was going to press on there was no point thinking about that.
He filled his lungs and blew out, psyching himself up for the next step in this journey. For the first time in all the years he’d spent down the mines, a sense of the walls closing in filled his head. Claustrophobia. “Get a grip.” It was like a mantra. “Keep moving.” It was a race against time. Not only for Old Jimmy. One false move and he’d be in the same position.
Reaching out, he placed a hand on the nearest beam in his way, gradually increasing the force he was exerting on it to test how secure it was. It held. Bending over, he eased one leg over the crossbar, trying to fold himself down as compactly as possible so his back didn’t brush against the wall, his head and shoulders didn’t hit the ceiling and his legs didn’t put too much weight on the beam. Any of which could be disastrous.
He was over, but there was less than a foot’s space before the next beam and he had to repeat the manoeuvres. “Easy does it,” he muttered, but his heart was hammering and as he put his hand onto the beam to test its stability he saw he was shaking.
He crouched over the beam and had to twist to lift his leg clear, but as he did his shoulder hit the roof and a cloud of dust and rock fell on him. His heart in his mouth, he froze, waiting for the roof to come crashing down, obliterating him. When the shower of rocks stopped almost immediately, he made himself keep going. He was over. He squatted down, and wiped his face to get the dirt out of his eyes.
Less than two metres away, there had been a further collapse, much worse. Much of the roof had come loose, too, not just the props. The roof in between looked just as unstable. He asked himself why Old Jimmy had come down here—he must have known the ceiling had become unsafe—but he already knew the answer. If he’d thought he was onto some great gems, like he’d told Matt’s dad, there was no way he’d have risked leaving the opals here until he’d fixed the supports. He crept forward and thoughts ran wild in his head. He even knew what would’ve happened when the situation had worsened today. He could almost hear the old miner muttering, “Just a few more minutes,” as if some invisible force would hear and agree to hold the roof long enough for him to get out with the best find of his mining life.
He knew this because he’d grown up on the mines. And he knew this because, damn it, against all sense, exactly the same thoughts were flooding his head now, bargaining with the same deity to give him the time he needed.
“Eureka!” He whistled under his breath, afraid to disturb the surroundings.
Through a narrow aperture at the top of the pile of rocks and debris stacked up around the ceiling beams, he could see Old Jimmy.
He edged closer, shuffling his feet, balancing himself with the tips of his fingers, his palms scratching the earth, and peered over the top of the nearest pile of debris. The man was immobile, slouched forward with his upper body pinned under a prop. He was in a tiny area—beyond him the tunnel was almost totally blocked—and his lower body was buried.
“Jimmy? Can you hear me? It’s Mattias.”
No response.
Whether the older man had been knocked unconscious, had passed out with pain or had had a heart attack with the stress, Matt couldn’t tell. It looked as though the falling beam and rocks had probably knocked him across the back of the head and neck before folding him forward onto his knees, trapping him there.
Matt eased himself forward. Could he squeeze over the top of the blockage? One wrong move and more of the roof could come down. He should leave, he knew that. He should wait for the response team to come with the right equipment to temporarily prop the ceiling and handle the evacuation. But from the look of Old Jimmy, they didn’t have that sort of time. Protocol be hanged, he really didn’t have a choice here.
Slowly, he began to pick rocks off the top of the blockage, stacking them to either side of his feet. He’d need to clear enough space before he could ease himself over the top. There was one beam still in the roof just beyond the pile. There was no way of testing whether that, too, was about to come down. He’d just have to hope like hell it would’ve collapsed with the rest of them if it were going to.
Rock by rock, like a game of pick-up-sticks, he continued to move the debris from the top of the pile. It seemed like hours had passed by the time he decided he’d cleared enough space to try. It was probably only fifteen minutes. And in that time Old Jimmy hadn’t moved.
Matt closed his eyes. There was no room for fear or doubts, only for infinite care. Leaning his hands on the rock pile, he bent his body until his torso was almost lying flat on top of it. Almost in slow motion he lifted one leg clear over the mound, balancing as much weight as he could on that leg once it hit the ground, then following with the other.
He’d made it.
He crept towards Old Jimmy. Reaching out, he slipped his fingers to the side of the man’s neck. No carotid pulse. “Damn.” The word echoed.
He stretched a bit further, sliding his hand under Old Jimmy’s chest, reaching for his arm. His fingers closed around his forearm and he wriggled them further down, searching for Old Jimmy’s wrist. No pulse there either.
He was too late.
And there was no way he could risk pulling him free of the debris he was trapped in to attempt CPR. There was no point. There was nothing he could do.
“Sorry, old-timer, I was too damn late. And you were too damn stubborn.” Matt rubbed a hand across his eyes and squatted back on his heels just as the beam above creaked and shifted, the noise startling him in the silence so that he overbalanced and fell backwards, hard against the rock pile. He could feel the rocks teeter and then begin to fall around him, on him, one cracking him on the knee, hard, and then he looked up to see the ceiling be
am move again. He tried to scramble to his knees and get himself back over the rock pile, away from the collapse that was about to happen, but his knee gave out on him, and he hadn’t been expecting that. It caught him off guard and as the beam and rocky roof above him seemed to creak down closer, he knew he’d missed his chance.
He flung himself at the rock pile, desperate to scramble clear, but the collapse was quicker. His arms and torso were on the pile now but he hadn’t been fast enough. The beam caught him square on the lower back, trapping him in a fall of rocks. He felt the force, an almighty blow, and still rocks kept falling, bouncing around him, hitting his arms and striking his head—thank goodness for the helmet—and it felt like a nightmare that would never end. He had to close his mouth and hold his nose shut, his eyes tightly shut, too, against the air thick with rock dust. He tensed his jaw, his arms, shielding his face, and tried to keep his panic in check, keep his mind focused on staying calm, not thinking, analysing, just getting through this alive, while the rocks built up around him.
It seemed an eternity before the collapse ended, and when he tried to open his eyes all he got was a face full of dust and it was some moments more before the dust had settled enough for him to keep his eyes open. The light was flickering and he thought, at first, that it was just the dust settling. Then he realised that it was his head-lamp, presumably struck by one of the falling rocks.
He uttered a stream of abuse under his breath.
If he could pull himself free, then he could at least crawl down the tunnel and wait where it was less unstable and try to coax some extra time out of his light. He gripped the remains of the pile with his hands, tensing himself on his forearms, and then he tried to find a foothold with his feet, to give him an extra little bit of force to lever himself free.
“Hell.” If ever he’d had need for an expletive, it was now.
He couldn’t feel his feet. His legs. Or his lower back. There was no way he could pull himself clear just with his arms when his lower body and legs were pinned. And especially not when his legs were effectively a deadweight. The blow to his lower back must have done some damage after all, but he blocked out the implications. He couldn’t think about that. He had to concentrate all his energy on getting out, on living through this.
He turned his face up to the roof, craning his neck in his attempt to see behind him. Was it safe to take his helmet off, so he could fiddle with the lamp and try to get it to hold out? He couldn’t see well enough in the fading light. If he was going to have any chance of digging himself out, he had to take the risk.
There was another blockage just ahead, the one he’d first got himself over, and if he tried to continue in the dark, he’d be crawling straight into a booby trap. Although with his legs useless, there was almost no need to even think about getting free. It couldn’t be done. But the thought of being trapped down here, imprisoned in what seemed more and more like a rocky tomb, in total darkness, was almost enough to have him lose his self-control totally. He had to try.
Gingerly, he slipped his helmet free and turned it over in one hand. He had just enough time to see that the wires leading from the battery to the lamp still seemed to be connected before the light flickered one last time and died. His heart sank with it as complete darkness closed in around him. He felt for the battery compartment. Maybe the batteries had been loosened by the falling rocks, interrupting their connections? He fiddled with the batteries, blindly trying to push them into place. Nothing. The mine remained pitch black.
He was aware of the noise first, and then the smell of dust around him. And then he felt it, the shower of rocks beginning again. He tried to close the battery compartment so he could put his helmet on, a voice in his head berating him for having removed it in the first place. There, closed. He lifted it to his head just as an excruciating pain shot up his hand, making him drop the helmet. He raised his arms over his head, but it wasn’t enough. The next rock hit him square across the back of the head and, although everything around him was already dark, he knew that the darkness was beginning in his head now, too. If he survived this at all and they managed to pull him out alive, he knew he wouldn’t be conscious to know about it.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“MUM, it’s for you. It’s Connor.”
Jess held the cordless phone out to Steffi as she dumped her bag on the kitchen table. She’d just got home after her appointment with the psychologist and had been thinking, not for the first time, that she’d have to tell Matt about her panic attacks at some point. Things had to be out in the open, especially if it meant she was avoiding dates with him because of it. Her appointment today would have meant a very late start to a date tonight. How did she explain everything that had been going on when she’d been trying to pretend all was fine?
She held out her hand for the phone, wondering why the paramedic was calling her.
“Connor, what’s up?” She opened the fridge door, taking out a carton of orange juice.
“There’s been a mining accident in Coober Pedy.”
A shiver of fear ran through her as she replaced the carton and closed the fridge. “Matt was in Coober Pedy today.”
“I know. I also know you and Matt are close, so I thought you’d best hear it from me early on.”
The trickle of fear intensified and became like icy fingernails scraping down her spine. “What’s happened?”
“A miner was trapped and Matt went down after him. He was caught in a further collapse. They got him out, eventually. He’s alive but he’s being airlifted to Adelaide as we speak.” Connor paused and Steffi knew there was worse to come. “He was trapped from his waist down. He was unconscious but there’s some concern about spinal injuries.”
“Do you know …?” She trailed off, unable to voice the fears creeping through her.
“I don’t know what the prognosis is. I’m sorry, I’d only be guessing. We’ll have to wait until the neurologists have seen him.”
“Where’s he being taken?”
“Prince Edward’s.”
“Where I used to work.” Thoughts raced through her head, bumping into each other. “What was he doing down the mine in the first place? Isn’t there a rescue team or something?”
“Yes, but they were already busy so Matt went down on his own.”
A cry escaped her throat. “Why him? He doesn’t know the first thing about mines!”
“Matt? Of course he does.” She could hear the puzzlement in Connor’s voice. “He grew up down the mines, his dad’s a miner. But he still shouldn’t have gone down unaccompanied, against all safety protocols.” Connor broke off and, in the background, she could hear talking. “I have to run. I’ll check in with you later. Are you alone with Jess? Do you want me to ring someone?”
“No, that’s OK. Thanks for the call.”
“No problem. Let’s hope we have some good news soon, hey?”
The line went dead and Steffi let her arm fall limply at her side.
Fear and anger were battling for recognition but she couldn’t think straight, there was so much noise in her head, so many thoughts clamouring for supremacy. Matt was injured, maybe critically. He’d been trapped down a mine. He’d grown up down the mines. Why hadn’t he ever told her that? What had possessed him to take such a stupid risk as to go down alone, without special equipment? There were no answers, and meanwhile Matt was being airlifted to Adelaide. This very moment, he would be secured to a stretcher and have an IV line in, a neck brace and goodness knows what else.
The thoughts whipped around, faster, faster, chased by unwelcome images of Matt, her Matt, immobile, unconscious, and suddenly she was gasping for breath. She was having a heart attack, she was going to suffocate—and all she wanted to do was run, run as fast and as far away as she could get from the nightmare. Everything about her seemed not to be itself, nothing was real. She staggered away from the kitchen bench, dragging in great breaths, but it wasn’t enough, she couldn’t get enough air.
“Mummy?”
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Jess was in the doorway.
She had to get away and her body was poised for flight, edgy, heart racing, and she was looking wildly about the room for a way out of this madness.
“Mummy?” Jess was crying now. “What’s wrong? Mummy, are you sick?” A little hand held onto Steffi’s arm but the voice was far away, hazy, unreal.
“Mummy? What’s the matter? I’m scared.”
The thin line attached at one end to insanity and at the other to Jess, to normalcy, was running straight through her. She could feel it, tugging, pulling, cutting her in two, the whirl of panic spinning inside her.
“Mummy?” Little hands clutched at her and the feel of them caused the thin line to slacken, just a little but enough to tug her, unresisting, back to Jess, the simple touch seeping through the fog of unreality.
And she started to remember that she wasn’t suffocating or going crazy or dying. She was having a panic attack and the worst of it was over.
She was OK.
And whatever it took, she’d make sure she never had another one, never put her daughter through that terror again.
“Jess.” Her voice cracked and Jess flung herself into her arms, her head buried against Steffi’s neck, her tears many and hot against her mother’s skin.
“I’m sorry, sweetheart.” Steffi squeezed her tight, as if by holding her closer than close she could stop the last few minutes forming a memory for the precious daughter she’d just terrified. “Mummy’s OK. I’m sorry I frightened you, everything’s OK.”
She kissed her daughter’s hair, wanting to ease the fright away but she couldn’t pretend it hadn’t happened. Jess wasn’t stupid, and it would only add to her confusion and fright. “Matt’s had an accident and he’s being taken to Adelaide so the doctors can fix him up.” She dragged in a deep breath. “I got a fright when I heard, a bit like you got a fright when you saw me so upset. But I’m OK now. I just forgot how to breathe for a minute.”