by Dianne Drake
“We both are,” he agreed, finally breaking the connection between them when he pulled his hand away. “But now I think it’s time to assess…” Suddenly, the full force of where they were and what was happening came crashing back in on them in the frightening sound of the low, jet-engine-like rumbling that emanated as a forerunner to much worse things. It snatched their attention, an awareness of what was about to happen again and, immediately Bella pitched herself forward on top of Gabriel, who wrapped his right arm around her and held her as tightly as he could while the earth literally rolled and bucked beneath them.
Like an airplane crashing to earth, Bella thought, all the horrible images and memories flooding back to her. They grabbed hold, trying to seize her by the heart and squeeze the very life out of it. She couldn’t stay there. Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think.
Had to get away. Had to run. Hide. “Let go of me,” she screamed, trying to force herself away from Gabriel even though the earth was still shaking. But he only held on tighter.
“Leave me alone!” Bella struggled against him as dirt and rocks from the embankment above them pelted down like a convulsive storm, hitting and stinging them, bruising and cutting their exposed areas of skin. “Gabriel, please…” She thrust herself away from him, pushing off him with her foot, kicking his side, much the way she’d pushed out the window in the car, effectively breaking his hold on her. Then she tried to roll away, but he rolled over and caught her arm, grunting and straining from the pain. And he wouldn’t let go as she fought him, harder now, hit at him with her fists, tried kicking him. “Let go of me,” she screamed over and over. “Please, let go of me!”
“Arabella!” he yelled. “Stop it! Do you hear me? Stop it!”
“I can’t,” she cried. “I can’t stay here. I have to…”
In one swift burst of energy, Gabriel yanked her back down on top of him, and nearly collapsed in doing so, fighting to hang on to the thinnest thread of consciousness left in him as the pain split through him. “Please, Arabella,” he gasped. “I can’t…” His world was wavering in and out now, almost as much as the earth was still wavering underneath them. “I can’t hold on to you.” Prophetic words as his arm had already dropped away from her before they were spoken.
Immediately, Bella bolted away, intent on running, but when she pushed herself up to her knees she noticed the way he was breathing so hard, the way he was wincing in pain, the way his eyes were squeezed shut. His face was scarlet, he was diaphoretic…Then suddenly the panic drained out of her in one swift purge, and the doctor inside took over. She couldn’t run away from him. He needed help. There wasn’t another thought in her but to take care of Gabriel. “Gabriel,” she said, crawling back to his side. “Tell me where it hurts.” Thank God the quake had diminished to aftershocks again.
“Shoulder,” he forced out. “Head, too, but mostly shoulder.”
She laid her fingers to his pulse, did a quick count, although her wristwatch was shattered. Even without an accurate measure she could tell it was too fast. Too fast, but strong, like he was. That was good. It meant there was a pronounced possibility he wasn’t bleeding internally or else he would have been shocky and his pulse weak. That wasn’t the case, though. “Let me have a look…”
He shook his head and drew in a sharp breath. Cold, pain-laden sweat dripped off his forehead and dribbled into the dirt underneath him. “You need to get back to the village…Ana Maria, my mother…everybody. They’ll need help, and it’ll take me too long to get back there. You go ahead. I’ll come along later…slower pace.”
Slower pace? Not a chance. He intended to stay right where he was and if something happened to her, and she couldn’t get back here later on to help him…Unthinkable. She wasn’t leaving him there alone. “No. I have to stay here with you,” she said, moving her hands to his left shoulder to do the assessment. As best she could, given the circumstances, she checked Gabriel for motor, sensory and circulatory problems, relieved to find that only his motor function, or movement, seemed impaired. The joint was warm to the touch, and sensitive to the touch as well, which was a good sign as that meant the likelihood of bleeding going on in his shoulder, specifically deep in the bone, was slim. And there was no swelling, which was another good thing.
“Look, Gabriel, this is going to hurt. You know that.” Her fingers probed deep to the bone while he gritted his teeth and held his breath, and she could almost feel sympathetic pain for him. This was excruciating, especially without pain medicine. But if he was lucky…Shutting her eyes, effectively shutting out everything but the feel of Gabriel’s shoulder, she concentrated on the contours of the bone, visualizing in her mind what she was feeling.
“I think you’re lucky,” she finally said, after about a minute.
“Lucky?” Gabriel let out a string of expletives, then apologized, and let out another string of expletives as she continued to probe. “How the hell can you call this lucky?”
“Lucky because it’s a dislocation, not a break, as best I can tell. And I’m pretty sure I can do a reduction and get it seated back in its socket.” Meaning, literally, to reduce the injury or, in this case, pop the shoulder back into place. When a dislocation was fresh, it was usually a relatively successful means to make the patient more comfortable. Being stranded out here as they were, a reduction would also help Gabriel get himself back up on his feet so they could try and return to the village. Together.
“Just dandy!” he snapped, biting down on his lower lip. “Full dislocation?”
“No. A partial. Subluxation.” Meaning the head of the upper arm bone, or humerus, was partially out of the socket, or glenoid. “You’ve got some anterior instability—” it had slipped forward “—but that’s easy to fix. Which is why I’m going to use the Spaso technique.”
“The Spaso technique? Why would you be current on reduction techniques? You’re not an orthopedist.”
“In a pediatrics practice you have to be a little bit of everything. Sometimes that’s an orthopedist. So what we’re going to do is get you in a nice, comfy supine position…”
“Comfy?” he snapped. “Why don’t you just leave me the hell here for now? I’ll be fine until someone can come after me.”
“I don’t leave anyone behind,” she said, unbuttoning her shirt then pulling it off to give herself more mobility. “I left someone I loved very much out here in this very jungle once, Gabriel, and I’m not going to do it again. Besides, a dislocation hurts a whole lot worse than it is serious. Once I get it popped back into place, you’ll be almost as good as new.”
“And the cure is worse than the injury. You know that!”
“But only for a little while.”
“Are you going to hypnotize me?” he grumbled.
“Do you want me to? Because I could, except I don’t think you’d be the most co-operative patient right now.” Laughing, she straddled him, then looked down, studying his physique for a moment. Nice physique. Good muscles, broad chest. The assessment wasn’t purely from a doctor’s point of view either.
“What I want is for you to go back to the village, see who needs help, check on…my baby.”
His baby. He’d called Ana Maria his baby, again, which meant it was growing on him now. Gabriel was undergoing a change of heart, even if he didn’t realize it. But she did. She realized all the nuances, and that made her happy for the both of them. “We’ll get there together, in just a little while. After I do this…” Bending, she grasped Gabriel’s affected arm by the wrist, then lifted it vertically. Very gently. “Sorry I don’t have a pain pill for you,” she said, when he winced.
“Whiskey would work,” he muttered through his teeth. “Lots of whiskey.”
“Then I’d have to carry you back, and that would slow me down.” When his arm was fully vertical, she pulled up even more, applying pressure as she pulled, and at the same time rotating the shoulder externally.
Reacting instinctively to combat the pain, Gabriel raised his shoulder in the d
irection she was pulling it. So she stopped for a moment until he adjusted to the pain level, and once he had she continued to pull. Traction, essentially. She was acting as the traction machine, moving his shoulder joint back into place by degrees.
Twice more, Gabriel adjusted to the pain and she was forced to stop for a moment. Unfortunately, the humerus didn’t seem to be slipping back into the socket as easily as she’d have liked so, while maintaining the upward pull to his arm, she bent even lower and gently pushed on his shoulder. Then suddenly she felt the pop she’d waited for. The reduction was complete and his shoulder joint was back in place. Just like that his pain level went from excruciating to dull ache.
Would his shoulder stay in place? That was another issue altogether. Sometimes that happened, sometimes the joint popped back out, possibly requiring surgical repair. For now all they could do was hope for the best, and make sure he favored it. Maybe get an X-ray when he could.
On impulse, Bella fashioned a sling from her shirt to tie around his neck. It would hold his arm and, in essence, keep weight off his damaged shoulder.
“You still conscious?” she asked, shifting her attention to his face. He was a bit pale now, and his breathing a little labored, but overall he looked none the worse for what she’d just put him through.
“Barely.”
She laughed. “I think you’re good to sit up.”
“It would be easier if you hadn’t kicked me in my ribs,” he grunted without so much as a flinch in the direction of getting up.
She had. And she felt terrible, now that she remembered it. “How about I help you get up to the road right now, then I’ll apologize later?”
“You’re damn right you will. Apologize, and explain. Everything.”
She glanced down at him, their eyes locking briefly. What she’d expected to see there was residual pain mixed with anger, but the only thing in his eyes was concern. For her. “I think I probably bruised you,” she said, bending down to help him first to a sitting position, then tying the sling around his neck. For an instant their faces were so close she could feel his breath on her cheek and in that instant awareness surged through her body, her soul. But it scared her, especially for all the things she was, and mostly for the things she wasn’t. “Bad arm in the sling, good arm around my neck,” she said, “and on the count of three…”
“Why are you so afraid of me, Arabella?” he asked.
“It’s not you I’m afraid of. It’s…” She shook her head. “On the count of three, we’re going to get you up. One…two…three…” With relatively little effort she helped Gabriel to his feet then, to avoid questions or eye contact or more awareness, she turned her attention to the embankment. How were they going to get to the top? It wasn’t steep, but for Gabriel it was going to be a challenge. “I don’t think there’s going to be an easy way to do this, and I’m not even sure I can be of much help.”
“There can be an easy way,” he responded. “If you go on, and let me do this at my own pace. I’ll be fine, Arabella. You don’t have to worry about me.”
“The only thing I’m worried about is the embankment, Gabriel. That’s all there is right now. One embankment to climb.”
“Like life. One embankment at a time. That’s all we have to overcome, isn’t it?”
In her life there were so many embankments. “Look, I’m not sure how to do this. Maybe you should go first, and I can stay behind you, kind of pushing when you need it. Breaking your fall if you slip.”
“Breaking my fall?” He shook his head. “You go up first, and let me deal with the embankment the best I can. Worry about yourself first, Arabella. For once, worry about yourself. And if I can’t get up, this time you have to go on without me. They’re going to need medical help in the village, and there’s no other choice.”
She swallowed hard. “I know,” she whispered.
“But it’s not like you’re leaving me here,” he said, pulling her with his good arm against his sore ribs rather gingerly. “Just think of it as my staying here to commune with nature for a while. Maybe that will make it better for you, because I will get there. I promise.”
She rested her head lightly against his shoulder, trying not to hurt him any further. But only for a moment. Then she pulled away. “No risks, Gabriel. Whatever you do, no risks. Promise me.”
“I promise. But life is a risk, Arabella. No matter how you take it, there will always be risks.”
“That’s the problem, isn’t it? When you so desperately need the safe, level ground, it’s not there to be found.” Impulsively, she raised herself on tiptoe and kissed him on the lips. It was brief, tender, and as much a surprise to her as it was to him. But it felt right and in a life where nothing had felt right in such a long time, something finally made sense. “I’ll see you at the top.”
Getting to the top took Bella only about five minutes, but it took Gabriel nearly fifteen as they were impeded by a series of aftershocks, one after the other. None of them bad, thank heavens. But finally he did make it to the road, where he stood next to Bella for a moment, sliding his arm around her waist as they looked at the car sitting precariously in the sinkhole. “My medical bag’s in there,” he said.
“Mine, too. Which means…” She inched her way toward the hole, then looked down. They weren’t going to be of much use without the few instruments they had somewhere down in that sinkhole, and there was no way of getting around that. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
Bracing herself for the climb back down, Bella dropped to the edge of the sinkhole, carefully pushing herself over the edge of it and straight through the broken car window. As she did so, the car shifted, the front end plunging down a good two feet more as the dirt underneath it gave way. If I get out of this one alive…she vowed silently, then didn’t finish that thought as she crept over the front seat and found her own medical bag on the floor behind the driver’s seat. Had Rosie thought the same thing—if I get out of this one alive—when the plane was going down? Had she thought anything else?
It’s funny, how she’d never considered Rosie’s last minutes. Only her demise. Yet her sister’s last minutes seemed so…so close, so real all of a sudden, she could almost feel them. More real than she’d ever wanted them to be.
“Found anything?” Gabriel yelled down to her, jolting her out of her bitter-sweet thoughts.
“Mine.” She looked around for a moment, and found his medical bag wedged between the far door and the seat. It took her a short time to yank it free, and when she did, the car rocked again, but this time it rocked because the earth was moving. Another earthquake! Or aftershock! She had to get out now. Get back to the surface before…
The plain, bitter taste of fear burned her throat as she scrambled back to the front window. That’s when she noticed…Dear God! The hole had opened up even more and she was not only shifting, she was sinking. All these past weeks and she would have welcomed her fate in a sinkhole but now…now she wanted to get out, wanted to get back to Gabriel. She wanted to live! “Gabriel!” she shouted. “I’m going to throw the bags to you.” And hope she had enough time to get out of there herself.
The first bag went up relatively easily. The second hit the edge of the hole and bounced right back to her, forcing her to lunge after it before it fell somewhere beneath the car. But as she lunged, the car teetered even more and a large chunk of the dirt wall holding it in place gave way, sliding downward and burying the front end completely. Even as the car was being buried, it was still shifting under the rolling wave of the ongoing earthquake. She had the bag in her hand, though, and gave it one hard toss, hoping it landed right because if it didn’t, there was no time left to readjust. She had to get out. Time had run out.
“Got it!” Gabriel shouted. “Now, get the hell out of there, Arabella.”
It wasn’t like he had to tell her to do that. The second the medical bag left her hand, she climbed on to the top of the car, spitting out dirt chunks, trying not to breathe in any more dirt
than she had to. It was dark, and she was far down now. There were at least seven or eight feet above her head to the surface, but, thank God, she wasn’t sinking any more. That had stopped, leaving only the shifting dirt to threaten her. But her only option was up. How could she do it? How could she crawl up there?
“Gabriel,” she choked out, batting away the falling dirt.
“Arabella, look up!”
She did, but all she could see was more dirt…and rocks. “Where? What?”
“Look up, Arabella. Keep looking up. It’s there.”
Eight feet to the surface…so close, and so far away. But she saw it. Her shirt…the one she’d used as a sling. It was twisted into a rope of sorts, tied onto his shirt, and dangling over the edge of the hole.
Reaching up, Bella grabbed hold and began to pull herself up…up…fighting against the dirt still sliding down on her, struggling to find footing against an earthen wall that was giving way, and walk up the wall as she pulled herself. It was only a few feet, but it felt like a hundred, fighting against the cascade of dirt trying to push her back down. Gritting her teeth, Bella forced herself not to think about the burning, shooting pain in her muscles now, or the dirt in her eyes, nose, mouth that threatened to asphyxiate her. She was so near, but so close to giving in…
“Arabella!”
The hand came from nowhere to grab her wrist, and that’s all it took to give her that last burst of energy she needed. Then she was on the ground, breathing fresh air, coughing dirt from her lungs. “Gabriel,” she gasped. But he didn’t respond. Instead, he scooped her up into his arms and carried her to the side of the road, well away from the sinkhole that had caved in completely on itself now and was threatening to open up even wider.
“Your shoulder,” she managed to get out.