by Kariss Lynch
“You ask much. I can only tell you what I saw. Kaylan will not speak of the rest.”
“Show us.”
Minutes later they stood outside two outer walls, all that remained of Rhonda’s home. As the walls had collapsed, they had created pockets, enabling Kaylan’s survival. Nick wanted to shoot something. The earthquake was an act of God, one he didn’t understand. Why?
“How did she live through that?” Micah sounded close to tears.
“Barely.” Nick noticed the hole through which they had pulled Kaylan. He wanted to go in. He needed to see. If he was going to walk her through this, he needed to understand.
“Abe, is it safe to go in?”
“It is difficult to say. Rubble no longer shifts, but you never know.”
“What happened?” Every house on the block was dust and crumbled stone. They reminded Nick of the brevity of life. From dust he was made, and to dust he would return. Many had died. How many had stepped into eternity with the Lord?
“It took us a couple of hours to dig her out. I found her holding Sarah Beth. Lots of blood. Covered in dust. She would not leave her. Stevenson and I pulled her from the room, kicking and screaming.”
“How did she escape and Sarah Beth die?”
“Part of the ceiling fell and pinned Sarah Beth. Stevenson and I came back and did our best to dig her out. She didn’t have a chance.”
“Can you show me where you found her?”
“The hole goes to the bedroom they were in. You have to crawl. But you cannot miss it. There is still blood.”
Without hesitation, Micah dove in to the small opening in the rubble. Nick followed close behind, feeling as if he were crawling through the trenches. Glass and gravel sliced his palms. He wound around pipes and jagged cement. There was no question, he was in a war zone—a war zone of a different kind.
“Blood.” Nick pointed to a large rock. Near the chunk was more dried blood on the debris-covered floor.
“Looks like she crawled too.” Micah slithered over rocks, barely squeezing under the low ceiling. Nick pulled himself over to the pocket where Sarah Beth must have died.
“Is this it?” he called to Abe who crouched at the hole.
“Yes. Stevenson and I shifted the ceiling. You can see where Sarah Beth probably coughed up blood. The blood on the floor is from Kaylan’s leg.”
“She cut it in here?”
“Looks like she cut it on this rebar,” Micah shouted. “There’s blood on the tip. That’s where the blood trail begins.”
“Where was she coming from?”
“Her bed, it looks like. I can see more blood under the bed at the foot. Man, Hawk, the bed took the weight of the ceiling, and rocks are stacked around it. How did she make it out of that?”
Nick heard Micah shifting rubble. He studied the area where Kaylan had held Sarah Beth. Something silver caught his eye in the meager light from the hole. He shifted aside shards of rock. The necklace he had sent Kaylan lay in the rubble, the chain snapped but the lily still intact. He stuffed it in his pocket to give to Kaylan later.
“Look what I pulled from under the bed where she was hiding.” Micah scooted over to Micah, his back scraping the fragile ceiling.
Nick reached for the box he had given Kaylan weeks before in the dance studio. He opened the lid and ran his fingers over the envelopes. “Wow. These letters have officially survived a war in Afghanistan and an earthquake in Haiti.”
“When did you write these?”
“On our deployment. I gave them to Kaylan before she left for Haiti.”
Silence descended as they both gazed around the shattered room. Normally Micah would have given him grief for writing letters to his sister, but under the circumstances . . .
“Find anything else under her bed?”
Micah shook his head. “She was pinned pretty tight. I don’t know how she managed to wiggle out. The only reason the box survived was because it was under the bed. Apparently she made it under there before the house crashed around her.”
Nick surveyed the room and crawled toward the gap. “I’m not sure I want to know the details.”
“I wish there was a bad guy to chase.”
“Yeah, no joke.” They would help Kaylan through this, but Nick had a feeling that what lay ahead would be his most difficult mission yet.
They reached the opening and pulled themselves through, landing on the street. Abe helped them up.
Nick dusted himself off then looked at Micah. “We’re outta here. Today. She needs a doctor, and she can’t stay here.”
Micah nodded. Nick skirted around rubble, his feet kicking up dust. Each step took him closer to Kaylan and to getting her home. But would she ever recover from what she had seen?
PART THREE
Chapter Twenty-Four
THE GROUND RUMBLED, and Kaylan gripped something soft. Her eyes flew open as she bolted upright. Light assaulted her eyes. Something sharp tugged and stung her hand.
She wrestled with the sheets and clawed at the gown on her chest. Trapped. The walls closed in, and she couldn’t breathe.
Get under the bed. Get under the bed.
Rough hands grabbed her, and she fought. Everything shook. She had to hide.
“Kaylan, Kaylan, it’s okay. It’s just a cart. It’s okay.”
She stilled. She knew that voice—warm, familiar like the waves brushing the shore. Nick. She gripped his shirt and glanced around the bright, white room. An IV drip hung by the bed. In her frenzy she’d pulled the needle free.
“Where are we?”
“At the hospital in Tuscaloosa.”
“How long have we been here?”
“Just a day. You slept through most of it.” He rubbed her arms, and her muscles loosened.
“How? I didn’t get to say good-bye. What about Rhonda and Abe and Stevenson and Yanick and the baby? Where’s Sarah . . . ? No. It was a bad dream. It has to be a bad dream.”
Her hands shook, and she thrust trembling fingers into her hair. The room spun. Her eyes took in bouquets of flowers and the chair Nick had just vacated with a blanket in it. How to get out? How to get back? Sarah Beth was still in Haiti.
“Where is everyone?”
“Coffee run. We’ve taken turns staying with you.”
“I . . . I don’t remember leaving.”
“You lost a lot of blood in your leg. You were dehydrated and hungry. A little dazed.”
He brushed her cheek, and she moved closer to his hand, enjoying the warmth. She felt cold through her bones to her heart. Shivering, she pulled the blanket around her. She wasn’t sure she would ever be warm again.
She strained, trying to remember. She remembered a man falling on her and the tugging sensation on her leg as Rhonda worked to piece her back together. She remembered the droning sound of a plane and seeing the faintest flash of Haitian countryside fade below her. But it was a blur, the images just dim snapshots in an emotional fog. Through it all, though, she remembered feeling safe again in spite of the heavy sleep that held her captive. Nick. It had been Nick and Micah who took her away.
A nurse entered the room, and Kaylan found Nick’s hand and held on tight—her lifeline. The room blurred, and she was once again back in the black bedroom of Rhonda’s house. Sarah Beth’s hand was cold in hers, too cold.
You remember that summer we found that mutt puppy in the woods behind the house?”
Kaylan laughed softly. Sarah Beth had a thing for rescuing what no one else wanted. It had drawn her to Haiti. “We took him home and gave him a bath. He was the ugliest thing I’d ever seen. My parents said we couldn’t keep him. We spent a week hanging signs, but you claimed him.”
“Good ole Tiger. He had red, black, and brown fur. Beautiful.” Sarah Beth’s grip grew weaker, and Kaylan struggled not to panic. She strengthened her hold. If she could hold on, Sarah Beth would be fine. People were coming. They had to be, because life without Sarah Beth was too awful to contemplate.
“Kaylan?”
The white room snapped back into focus. She bent over, holding her stomach, her nails digging into Nick’s hand.
“The lights, please. It’s too bright.”
Nick turned off the lights, and Kaylan released a breath. Shadows greeted her like old friends.
“Miss Richards, I need to put your IV back in.” Kaylan averted her gaze from the needle and met Nick’s eyes. She wasn’t ready to answer his questions. She didn’t want to relive the memories. But what had happened to her friends? To Rhonda and Abe and Stevenson? To the moms? To Yanick’s baby?
“Miss Richards, are you ready to eat something? We need to get you back to normal.”
“What’s normal?” Kaylan whispered, licking her cracked lips. Nothing could be normal again. Sarah Beth should be in the bed next to her. They would talk late into the night, cry over their friends, thank God to be back with their families, and then work through the aftermath together.
“You need to eat, Kayles.”
“Nothing sounds good.”
“Well, how ’bout I bring you a little bit of soup and maybe some ice cream? Does that sound good, honey?” Kaylan nodded, and the woman left the room. The sun descended outside the hospital window, the sky murky and dark. When had the colors left?
Kaylan felt Nick’s eyes—piercing, even from a distance. His arm around her shoulders and his hand stroking her arm reassured her, but the warmth faded as soon as his fingers left the spot. She searched the room for something, anything to focus on, but his gaze held steady. Her Hawk—always too perceptive.
“Sarah Beth’s family was here.”
Kaylan braced herself for bad news. They had to hate her.
“They’re praying you gain your strength back soon and are waiting for a service until you’re out of the hospital. I think they want you to speak.”
She almost jerked the IV out of her hand again.
“Babe, it’s okay. Calm down. You don’t have to.” His arms held her tightly, and muscle by muscle she stilled.
“I can’t.”
They would want to know what had happened, and she couldn’t tell them. She couldn’t speak of the final hours. She couldn’t describe the twisted position of Sarah Beth’s body. The image seared into her mind, but no words came close to describing the horror. They would hate her for surviving instead of their daughter. Sarah Beth should be here instead of Kaylan. Sarah Beth had believed in going to Haiti from the beginning. Sarah Beth should have been the one to live and come home. She’d had so much to give.
Nick squeezed her gently, and her bruises cried in protest. “What’s going on in that beautiful head of yours?” He tipped her chin up, his fingers caressing her skin. “Can you talk to me?”
How could she tell him? How could she explain? How could she say that it was her fault her best friend was dead? Eliezer had said so. If she discussed it, it would happen all over again. She would smell the dust, and feel rock and glass slice into the tender flesh of her palms. She would feel the limp grip of her dying friend, taste the grit in the air and the bitter brine of tears and blood on her cracked lips. It would no longer be a dream but a reality. She couldn’t.
“Nick, I don’t think there are words to describe what happened. I can’t.”
“Give it time, Kayles. It’s still pretty new.”
“Time won’t heal this. There’s a gaping hole where . . . where my friend used to be. People are gone, a whole country reduced to dust and rubble. How does that heal?”
A knock sounded on the door before it opened, causing Kaylan to jerk at the sudden noise. Nick squeezed her hand and moved toward the window as her family filed in the room.
“Kaylan? Oh, honey, I’m so glad you’re awake and talking.” Her mother rushed into the room, enfolding Kaylan in her arms. She rested her head on her mom’s shoulder, feeling like a lost child.
“How ya doing, sis?” Seth carried lilies and studied her over their mother’s shoulder.
How could she answer? She offered the ghost of a smile. Exhaustion once again fought for prominence. As she leaned back against her pillow, she watched her family talk and pamper her as sleep once again crowded in. Maybe, just maybe, she would wake up again and it would all be a bad dream. Maybe.
The sun dipped below the cityscape, and the world faded to black outside the hospital window. The nurse had come and gone with the dinner that Kaylan had barely tasted before mercifully falling asleep again. The room was quiet, barred to the hospital noise just outside the door. Nick wished he could shield Kaylan from the world that easily.
Nick watched Kaylan from the window. Bruises colored her jaw line, a bandage covered the cut at her temple, and discoloration rimmed her eyes. Her grip had been strong and frantic as she fell asleep, her eyes wild and fearful, like someone fighting for her life. She had spent the last week doing just that.
What could he say to soothe the fear? To take away the pain? No medicine existed for this; no machine yet invented could rewind time or bring back thousands of innocent lives lost in a few earth-shattering seconds. Easy answers ceased to exist . . . only questions. Questions he too had asked God more than once.
He approached the bed and brushed a wayward curl from her forehead before bestowing a gentle kiss. As he settled back into the chair, he reached for her hand and gazed through the hospital window. Only city lights winked and sliced through the overpowering darkness.
Chapter Twenty-Five
FLANKED BY HER family and Nick, Kaylan entered the church for Sarah Beth’s memorial service. It had been ten days since the earthquake. Crutches helped with the limp, but truth be told, she welcomed the pain. It kept her focused on placing one foot in front of the other.
Even now, tears refused to come. Only a gaping hole remained. Something had broken inside her when Sarah Beth had breathed her last, and that part lay buried beside her friend in the deforested land of Haiti.
Faces turned and studied her as she progressed down the aisle. Silence cloaked the sanctuary.
Sarah Beth was never quiet.
A slideshow played on the big screens on either side of the choir loft in the large room. Kaylan froze as Sarah Beth’s face appeared larger than life. She was two and making mud pies, then five with her arm around Kaylan and holding a hot pink Barbie lunch box. They were seven and dancing in The Nutcracker, wearing pink tutus, and then ten and riding horses with Pap. They had always been a team. Inseparable. Their lives intertwined from the earliest days, like a rope that had now frayed.
“You okay, babe?” Nick murmured.
She shook her head. How could she be okay? “I can’t do this.” She began to turn around, knocking into Micah, who grabbed her and held her still, hugging her as best he could with her crutches. David and Seth moved forward to shield her from curious eyes. The rest of the family cocooned them as well, Kaylan at their center. Her body shook. She couldn’t speak. She couldn’t even walk up the aisle. Not with Sarah Beth buried next to the road in a shattered country that had sucked the life out of her.
“Kaylan?”
Kaylan’s family parted to reveal Mrs. Tucker, Sarah Beth’s mom. “We’d like you and your family to sit with us. Y’all were a second family to Sarah Beth, and it seems only appropriate.”
Kaylan hobbled forward, Nick and Micah at each arm, to slide into the row behind Sarah Beth’s parents and brother. Mrs. Tucker reached over the pew and clasped Kaylan’s hand, dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief.
“I’m so glad you are safe, hon. Sarah Beth . . . she would have hated if something had happened to you.”
Kaylan tried to swallow the lump in her throat, but it refused to leave, much like the numbness in her heart.
Music continued to play in the background, and the occasional sniff broke the rhythm. Sarah Beth had loved loud music. No matter the song, she cranked it up on her radio or music player and sang off-key at the top of her lungs. When people stopped to stare, she sang louder. This music didn’t fit her. Nothing about this proper, somber event suited her. Sara
h Beth had been like sunshine and neon-colored popsicles on an Alabama summer day. Seth had worn his purple button-down and hot pink tie in honor of her, and Kaylan appreciated it more than she could say. He reminded her of Sarah Beth, of laughter and sunshine.
Scuffling and whispering voices added a different cadence. Kaylan welcomed the distraction as the class Sarah Beth had taught slipped in the back, each child with a wrapped item in hand. The teacher led them down the aisle to place their presents on the steps leading to the stage: clothes, toys, candy, bottled water, canned goods.
Mrs. Tucker whispered to her, “The kids want to help with Haiti relief in honor of Sarah Beth.”
The students reminded Kaylan of her little Sophia, quiet yet happy. What would become of her now? Sarah Beth had loved playing with her, braiding her hair, teaching her. And Reuben? He was all legs and smiles, the boy who would bring joy to his country by representing his people as a professional soccer player. Sarah Beth had cheered him on. And now? Now he was buried in a mass grave, his dream snuffed out in the quake that shook more than the earth.
She looked to Nick again, her insides twisting like knotted thread. She desperately needed to deliver a speech that would honor her best friend, but everything appeared dull, lifeless without her. Above all, she couldn’t talk about Sarah Beth’s last moments. She couldn’t talk about Haiti. The one person who would have understood remained there, her grave a bed for the spring grass.
“I can’t do this.” She searched his eyes.
His lips skimmed her cheek. “You’re gonna do great.”
She shook her head, panic returning with a vengeance. “I can’t do this.”
He pulled her close and she rested there, absorbing the touch but feeling nothing. Had her nerves been damaged in the quake, or was everything in the world dull now? Would it be this way forever?
Sarah Beth’s brother, Tom, stood and spoke about his sister. Tears flowed, and his voice caught. His parents came to stand at his side, the Tuckers united in the loss of one of their members. Kaylan’s jaw ached and eyes stung where tears should be. More music played, and more people spoke. Sarah Beth had known no stranger, found favor with everyone. Each person who spoke honored her memory as a woman who loved God and loved people. A violinist played “I Surrender All,” Sarah Beth’s favorite hymn. She had surrendered all, and Kaylan knew she would gladly do so again.