Carl’s hand grabbed his, and clung for dear life.
“You’re okay, Andy. Just get in here where you can breathe.”
Behind him, Andy heard more debris moving, falling . . .
The heat of the fire cooled at his back. Maybe the fire had been smothered. He snaked his way through the rubble until he finally gasped a breath of fresh air. “I’m here.” His voice was a pitiful squeal. “Fire’s out.”
“Thank you, God.” Carl’s hand trembled. “Bree, where are you?”
“To your left, Carl.” Her voice was a high squeal. “But I can’t see. Glass or metal or something shattered into my eyes.”
Andy winced. It was hard to know whose injury was more severe. His throat still felt as if he’d swallowed hot coals, and from the size of the beam across Carl’s legs, he was sure that Carl’s legs were crushed. And now Bree’s blindness . . .
“Try to reach toward me,” Carl said. “Grab my hand.”
Andy heard scraping again, shifting rubble, grunting . . .
“I’ve got you!” Carl’s voice broke. “We’re all together now. We’re okay. Let’s not let each other go. We’ll get through this together.”
Bree began to cry, deep, panicked sobs. “My children . . .”
“Let’s pray,” Carl said. “Come on, Bree. Calm down, and let’s pray.”
Bree grew quiet, and Carl began to lift up their pain and fear and panic to the only One who knew for sure what their future held.
When they finished praying through the anguish of their pain and terror, they lay clutching each other’s hands, waiting.
“I don’t even have a will prepared.” Bree hated the eerie way her voice echoed in the silence. “I don’t know who will take care of my children. They’re so young. They need me.”
“We can’t give up.” Carl’s voice rose in pitch, as if he spoke through soul-splitting pain. “We have to get out of here.”
Bree tried to push up with her body, but it was no use. “There must be something we can do. Make noise or something. Maybe they’re out there looking for us.”
“Maybe she’s got a point.” Carl’s trembling hand tightened on Bree’s. “Maybe we need to make some noise, keep talking so that if they have any of those ultrasensitive microphones they’ll pick us up. We could sing.”
“Sing?” Bree couldn’t stand the thought. “Are you out of your mind?”
“A hymn,” he said. “The Bible says we should praise God in all things. If we need to make noise, singing would do it.”
“I know we’re supposed to praise Him,” Bree said, “but I think He understands if we don’t feel like singing now.”
“Fine. Then talk, and keep talking until someone finds us.”
The pain in Bree’s eyes distracted her, and she couldn’t think of what to say. So she talked about that. “My eyes feel like a dozen ice picks are stabbing through them. Even if we live, I may never see again—” Her voice broke, and she felt that panic rising again. She drew a deep, calming breath and forced herself to go on. “I don’t want to be blind. I want to see my children’s faces again. I want another chance to appreciate how beautiful they are. I never appreciate anything! Rainbows, sunsets, snow-peaked mountains . . . I’ve taken them all for granted. And people . . . I go around looking right through them, never really seeing them . . .”
She let her voice trail off, then finally whispered, “Go ahead and sing. My rambling isn’t doing us any good.”
Carl cleared his throat. She had heard him sing in church, and he was basically as tone deaf as they come. But that didn’t matter now.
He began to sing the chorus to “We Are Standing on Holy Ground,” and when he came to the part about angels standing all around, Bree cut in.
“Do you think there are? Angels, I mean.”
“If God ever uses angels, and we know He does, I’ll bet He’s using them now.”
Carl kept singing, and finally Bree joined in. The simple song got her mind off of the pain in her caked, bloody eyes, and calmed her panicked spirit.
Carl formed the groans in his throat into the words of the song, trying to concentrate on the angels of God hovering around them rather than the angel of death that surely loomed over them. But the pain twisted through his body, making him want to scream.
Wasn’t that a good sign? Pain might mean that he wasn’t paralyzed. If his spinal cord was damaged, wouldn’t he be numb?
He sang on, trying to think of the pain as a good thing, but he couldn’t escape the picture of himself in a wheelchair, never able to walk again.
Then he thought of all those nights he’d spent propped up in his recliner watching football on ESPN. Nights he could have been out pounding the pavement to tell people about Christ.
If he was to meet God soon, what would He say about that? Wasted a lot of time, didn’t you, son? I gave you two perfectly good legs. Why you kept them propped up all the time as though you were recovering from surgery is beyond Me.
Carl’s response would probably be as lame as the earthquake had left him. “I worked hard all day, Lord. I thought it would be okay if I just chilled for a while.”
He closed his eyes against the regret. God, please, give me a chance to clean up my heart, even if I can never use my legs again. He wasn’t ready to face the throne of God just yet. There were too many things he had to do—if he ever got out of this place.
He kept singing, forcing himself to be as loud as the pain was intense, praying that someone above all the rubble would hear.
Andy wanted to join in, but his vocal chords felt as if they had melted in the searing smoke. He couldn’t make a sound come from his throat.
Even if a miracle occurred and they did survive this live burial, would he ever be able to speak again? He closed his eyes, mentally singing with his friends, trying to make the soft, sweet tune calm him and dull his pain.
What if his vocal chords were ruined, and he could never utter a word again? What if he never got the chance to say all those things he’d put off saying? There were so many people out there he’d meant to tell about Christ, but he’d hardly ever opened his mouth to tell of his Savior— He grimaced. What was he thinking? It was probably too late. He probably wouldn’t live to tell anyone anything.
When Bree and Carl reached the end of the song, Bree spoke first. “I’ve always wondered what people feel like when they know they’re going to die and leave their children behind. How they manage to trust God to take care of them.”
“He will, you know.” Carl’s voice held a note of determination. “He’ll take care of them.”
“But they can’t go live with their dad. He’s not fit to take care of them, and my mother’s not capable of doing it alone. She doesn’t have much money, and her health isn’t good. My sister’s got a career. It would just disrupt her lifestyle too much to have two kids in the house.”
Andy could hear the despair in her voice. For the first time in a long time, he was glad he didn’t have a wife or kids to leave behind.
Bree went on. “I shouldn’t have spoiled them so. I shouldn’t have spent so much time with them, because now it’ll hurt them so for me to be gone. I shouldn’t have read them stories at night before they went to bed, or snuggled them up in their beds, or laid down with them until they went to sleep.”
“How can you say that?” Carl choked the words out. “Bree, those are good things. You shouldn’t regret those.”
“But I should have prepared them.”
“How do you prepare a child for something like this? You can’t. You just do the best you can while you’re there.” Tears filled Andy’s eyes at Bree’s plight, and for Carl’s . . . and for his.
They sang again, one song after another, and Andy locked in on the words assuring him of God’s mighty sovereignty, of His goodness and mercy, of His presence in times of distress.
Finally, they prayed again.
“Lord—” Bree’s voice was so low that Andy almost couldn’t hear—“Lord, if
You’ll get me out of here, I’ll do better, I promise. I won’t take so much for granted, and I’ll use my time better. I’ll devote my life to serving You. Please, won’t You give me another chance?”
Silence passed, and they waited. Andy wondered why they heard nothing above them. No sirens, no digging, no voices calling out.
“At least we all know we’re going to heaven if we die.” Carl’s voice wavered with each word. “We don’t have to be afraid.”
Andy heard the sound of Bree sobbing. “I’m not afraid for me,” she said. “I’m afraid for my kids. I know I’m supposed to trust. I know that whatever God has in store for them, it’s right and it’s good. And I know He’ll take care of them if He takes me out of this life. I even know that maybe He needs for them to go through this to become the people He wants them to be.” Her voice broke off. More crying. He wished he could reach her and comfort her in some way.
“I’ve said that to other people who were dying,” Bree went on. “I’ve written it in condolence cards. And I believe it now . . . but I can’t help thinking it would be so much better if it didn’t have to happen.
“I’m sorry, Lord.” Bree spoke as if He lay there among them, holding her hand with the others. “I know we’re supposed to be excited about seeing You. Coming home is supposed to be such a joyful event. It’s just that I always pictured it being different, like at the end of my life . . . when I could look back and know that I’d done everything I was supposed to do. I can’t do that right now.”
Andy squeezed his eyes shut, echoing her prayer. Me too Lord. I’m sorry too. Carl started to sing again. Bree began to sing along.
Something shifted, and powder blew down on Andy’s face. He squeezed Carl’s hand, shutting him up.
“Shhh,” Carl told Bree. “I hear something.”
Bree got quiet and listened.
Something moved above them. “Do you think it’s starting again?” Bree asked. “Another aftershock?”
“No,” Carl said. “It’s somebody digging! We’ve got to yell. Everybody yell. Help! Help us! Can you hear us?”
They heard a voice then, and Bree started laughing, a pained, hysterical, gushing relief kind of laughter.
“We’re coming for you,” the voice called. “Just hold tight.”
Andy had heard accounts of near-death experiences, where the dead had seen a white light at the end of a dark tunnel, beckoning them toward the afterlife. When light broke through the darkness of the destruction around him, he knew it meant life for him too. He felt the brisk, fresh air blowing through the hole . . . and his lungs rebelled in a fit of coughing.
“How many of you are down there?”
“Three,” Carl yelled up, then the digging got louder and more urgent, and Andy felt the weight of the concrete being lifted off of him, felt steel and bricks falling away.
“We got ‘em!” somebody shouted.
Andy heard them working near Bree, scraping and yelling and pulling . . . and finally he heard her voice lifting over his head as they pulled her into the light.
“See about her eyes!” one of the rescuers yelled to the others.
“Get the others out,” Andy heard Bree say. “Andy had smoke inhalation and can’t breathe or talk. And Carl is crushed. Please get them out!”
He saw them coming back into the tunnel and heard power tools start up. When the buzzing died, someone yelled, “We’ve got to get Carl first before we can get to Andy. Are both of you all right?”
Carl spoke up. “Andy can’t answer. He breathed in a lot of smoke. He’s having trouble breathing. He wants you to hurry.”
Andy smiled. Carl, you read my mind.
It took a few minutes for them to cut Carl out of his vise, but when they got him on the gurney, Andy knew he was going to have to let go of his hand.
He dreaded letting go. Panic sweated over him as he opened his fingers and felt his friend slipping away. What if they got Carl out and the rubble shifted again, this time crushing him? What if the tunnel they’d dug closed up and they couldn’t get him out?
His heart hammered out its impatience as he waited for them to come back for him. Then he saw them hurrying back into the hole, and they reached him and pulled him out. It was like sliding through a birth canal, into the light of life. As he came into the day, he felt the jolt of that rebirth, into a world that seemed to have gone haywire.
3
PARAMEDICS SCURRIED AROUND BREE, CHECKING her eyes and sticking a needle into her arm. She could hear rescue workers yelling, television reporters doing live coverage, bystanders chattering and crying.
But she couldn’t make out light or shapes, shadows or grays. All was black.
Still, that wasn’t the main thing on her mind. “My children! I need to call—”
“Ma’am, we’ve got to get you to the hospital as soon as possible.”
“But if I could just use a cell phone—”
“All the lines are jammed since the quake.”
It must have been bad. Horrible. There were probably people buried all over the city. Brad . . . Amy . . .
They loaded her into the ambulance and closed the doors, shutting out the noise. I’m alive. She ran that thought through her mind again and again, focusing on the gratitude she felt rather than the paralyzing fear for her children, her mother, her eyes . . .
They reached the hospital in no time, and she jumped as the ambulance doors burst open. Her gurney was jerked out, and she had the strange sense of falling as they raced with her gurney toward some unseen target.
She heard crying and wailing around her, doctors calling out orders, nurses talking loudly to other patients.
“Glass and metal fragments in the eyes,” someone beside her yelled. “Vitals are stable. She was just pulled out of the rubble at General American.”
Fingers touched her face, probed her eyes. Pain shot through her as they pried her eyelids apart . . . but she still only saw darkness.
Sirens approached, and she heard the rumble of an engine growing near. And then she had the sense of abandonment, as if everyone surrounding her had moved on to someone else.
“Is anybody there?” She reached around her, groping at the air. “Please . . . I can’t see.”
“In a minute, honey,” a woman yelled. “We’re helping the more critical patients first.”
She thought of Carl, with his crushed legs, maybe even a broken back, and Andy, with seared lungs.
And others around her, in even worse shape.
Bree knew that time was important if her vision was to be saved, but how could she demand attention when people around her were dying?
She lay there, praying in a loud whisper, begging the Lord to take her blindness away. “If You do, Lord, I promise I’ll devote my life to serving You.”
But the prayer felt limp and lifeless on her lips, for her faith was weak, and she feared that the Lord had plans to use her blindness.
She thought of Paul on the road to Damascus. He’d been living for himself, and for some made-up God he thought he knew, when the Lord struck him blind. He’d been blind for three days, long enough to realize that the Lord was dealing with him. When his sight was restored, he was never the same again. Was the Lord dealing with her too? Would her sight be restored, or would the time ticking by make it more and more impossible for her to be healed?
Bree stopped the direction of her thoughts and decided to be grateful instead. She had been buried alive, and God had sent someone to rescue her. He knew of her plight.
The truth was that she didn’t have an ounce of control over anything that happened. Her eyes, and her family, were in God’s hands.
4
CHAOS REIGNED AT THE HOSPITAL AND AMBULANCES bottlenecked in the emergency room drive. Doctors stood in the driveway treating patients as they came out of the ambulances, performing emergency triage, rating the patients according to the severity of their conditions.
Carl moaned as they pulled him out of the rescue unit and surrou
nded him, evaluating his injuries. “Broken bones in both legs, possible vertebral fractures. Immobilize him and give him something for pain.”
“Doctor, can’t we get him into X-ray?”
“Yes, but he’ll have to wait in line. Life-or-death first.”
He started to protest, but the group around him dispersed. Then a nurse ran back with a syringe. She fed it into the IV they had inserted in the ambulance. Would he be paralyzed for the rest of his life? Or would his remaining days be plagued with chronic pain? He thought of Jacob, who’d wrestled with God and wound up with a dislocated hip. The Lord had used that in Jacob’s life, and had later made a nation out of that stubborn man. Was this affliction supposed to bring about some change in Carl’s life? Was he supposed to accept whatever his condition meant and expect God to work around it?
He didn’t want to accept it, any more than he wanted to work around it. You saved my life, Lord. Please save my legs.
In moments, relief from his pain seeped over him, and the day grew blurry as he fell into a shallow sleep.
They gave Andy oxygen on the way to the hospital, but breathing came with great difficulty. Once there, they did some respiratory tests and inserted a tube from his nose into his lungs. Then they left him there trying to breathe.
He lay still, slightly panicked, feeling the assault of abandonment. If only someone would come back!
Had they been able to help Bree yet? Was Carl in surgery? Or were they, like him, relegated to the end of the triage line, waiting their turns for treatment?
At least he had a room, unlike those lying on gurneys all over the parking lot and in the halls. He’d probably gotten special attention because they considered breathing a life-or-death event and they needed to attach him to this machine.
Still, he felt as lonely as he’d ever felt in his life. Even if he could speak, there was no one to speak to.
He thought of his voice, seared and broken. Would his vocal cords ever be restored, or had he been condemned to silence for the rest of his life? They had worked hard keeping him breathing, but no one had looked at his vocal cords to see what was wrong. What if they waited too long to address that?