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“Please! Help me! I’m so scared.”
Where was Michaela? Why wasn’t she talking? We could hear Leila, so why not Michaela?
“Leila,” Kellen sprawled over the bracing and spoke to the dirt. “We’re worried about the ground falling on you. Can you dig up toward us with your hands?”
“Like a gopher?” she asked, and her mother laughed and sobbed simultaneously.
“Yes,” Kellen confirmed. “Exactly. I’ll dig for you, and you dig for me. Deal?” He didn’t wait. With just his hands he started pushing dirt to the side, zeroed in on where she’d spoken last. I watched the earth, waiting for news, for anything that would allow me to hang onto hope. Fingers appeared in the soil, only small specks at first and then larger as the small child cleared away the dirt.
“I’ve got you!” Kellen shouted as his hand locked around her wrist. Leila didn’t answer. “She’s in the rough of it. Can’t breathe in the dirt. Dig around to loosen it!” His crew sprang to life, pulling the dirt back as he pulled on her wrists. Slowly, she appeared, first her arms, then her head, and her face with a deep raspy breath. Leila’s mother sank to the earth, arms reaching for her daughter instantly.
“Medic!” I don’t know who yelled it, but the hill sprang to life.
Everyone, but me.
I stared at the tunnel they’d created.
Where was Michaela?
Leila’s mother took her in her arms, spreading kisses all over her as she praised God for saving her child.
Where was Michaela?
“She saved me, Mommy.” Leila’s hoarse voice spoke of her trauma. Her father shifted to acting as her doctor, but the little girl would not allow him to check her. She refused to be silent.. “She saved me from dying. She kept me safe.” And then she said words that turned my heart to stone. “But she’s not moving anymore. She’s cold.”
“It’s giving way!” Kellen warned his men as the ground started to shift beneath them. The delicate balance of the earth had found a pocket to fill. Panic seized me, threatening to squelch out any hope I had left.
“No.” I crawled forward, desperate. “No. No. No.” The dirt caved in as Kellen’s people climbed out.
“We’ll wait for it to settle, and then we’ll start again.” Kellen spoke to someone, but I wasn’t listening any longer. She was there. I knew it. I wouldn’t wait.
Driving myself to my feet, I ran along the bracing beams that displaced weight. Cries of alarm called me back. I tuned out everything but kept my focus on the place they had been digging. Sprawled on my stomach across the boards, I clawed at the dirt, removing clods and rocks as my hands tore and bled under the abuse of the terrain. Arms pulled on my shoulders, but I shook them off, single focus in mind.
“It’s collapsing!” I heard the warning and ignored it.
“Coco!” I shouted her name, needing her to understand I hadn’t left. I hadn’t given up hope. I was there and I wouldn’t leave her. “Coco! Can you hear me?”
“Your Highness!” Kellen gripped my arm as if to forcibly remove me, but I dug my opposite arm in deeper, scraping along a buried rockface. It cut deeply into my arm, leaving me in blinding pain, but I shoved deeper, knowing that at any second they would remove me from the pit.
Strange, the things that pop into the mind in moments of traumatic stress.
Years ago, Denise, Coco’s mother, had sent us to an arcade with enough quarters to start our own treasury, and to my best friend’s dismay, all I wanted to play was the claw game.
“You’re never going to win.” Coco teased me incessantly as I went after every toy in my reach until I spotted a frog beneath the pile. “Just get the penguin on top and let’s go play Pac-Man instead.”
But I’d persisted. I never got the frog, and she’d teased me for years.
“That’s what you get, Fitz. You should have settled for something else.”
That’s what I was doing in this search for love. I was settling, determined that it wouldn’t matter in the end. A penguin was as good as a frog. But never again.
“Get his other shoulder. This whole thing is gonna go!”
I pushed the final inches, as if dropping the claw into the center of the cage. My hand locked around something soft. “I’ve got her!”
Priorities shifted instantly. Shovels, hands, even Leila’s father jumped into the fray to help remove the dirt that threatened Michaela’s life. I refused to let go. The ground rumbled as if another earthquake were imminent, but it only hastened the work. Her arm appeared and we pulled harder, removing her from the crevice where she was trapped.
“Medic!” I screamed as I scrambled from the sinkhole. I crouched on the edge and took hold of her body as they passed it to solid ground. “I’m so sorry,” I whispered against her hair as dirt tumbled from her and fell down my shirt. “Please forgive me.”
