by Emily Forbes
Pat suspected a number of people were going to the chapel because they thought paying their respects was the right thing to do. He could understand their reasons but, in his mind, their attendance implied that they didn’t expect to find anyone alive. He wasn’t prepared to give up hope. Not yet. It was still possible. Each passing minute made it less likely but that was why it was so important to keep going. Until every missing person was accounted for, he wasn’t going to give up. He nodded briefly, acknowledging Connor’s offer. He wasn’t going to try to talk him out of it. Protocol dictated that they work in pairs. He needed Connor if he wanted to continue.
The bells stopped ringing as the search zone was vacated, leaving Pat and Connor alone in their small section. They worked in silence, their movements methodical as they continued to clear their small area. As Pat pulled at a piece of broken and twisted window frame he heard a metallic ping. He threw the debris over his shoulder, assuming his movements had made the noise, but as the metal flew through the air he heard a second ping.
He looked around the site. There were a few people still working but no one nearby. He knew that sound on the mountain carried long distances and echoed. The sound could have come from anywhere but in the silence that had descended on the site he felt his hopes lift.
‘Did you hear that?’ he asked Connor.
‘Hear what?’
Pat was kneeling on the rubble but went completely still as he listened again.
‘What was it?’ Connor said.
Pat held up a hand. ‘Hang on a minute.’ But there was nothing more.
‘Hello? Can you hear me?’ He called out across the site. He could hear the expectation and excitement in his voice. He waited, still and silent, and his heart skipped a beat as he heard a reply.
‘Can you hear...?’
‘There! That.’ He turned to look at Connor but his friend was shaking his head.
‘It’s just an echo.’
Was it his imagination playing tricks? He was tired, they all were, but he knew it was something important. ‘I don’t think so.’ He called again. ‘Hello?’
‘Please. Help me.’
Pat turned back to Connor. ‘Tell me you heard that?’
Connor’s eyes were wide with surprise as he nodded.
Pat grinned. He could feel his smile splitting his face in two. ‘We’ve got someone!’
CHAPTER FOUR
PAT INCHED CAREFULLY across the concrete slab that might have once been a ceiling or a floor or even a wall. He reined in his eagerness, making sure his movements were slow and deliberate. The engineers had deemed the site safe but still he was cautious.
‘Hello?’ he called again as he pushed himself further out onto the collapsed building. ‘Can you still hear me?
‘Yes.’
The voice was faint and raspy but it was real. And it was female.
She was real and she was alive!
Excitement rushed through his body, flooding his muscles with adrenalin. Finally, they could mark another name off the list and this time they had a survivor.
‘Can you tell me your name?’
‘Charlotte. Charlotte Lawson.’
Could it be?
‘Charli? Is that you? It’s Patrick.’
‘Patrick?’
‘I’ve been looking for you.’ He couldn’t believe he had found her, that she was alive. It was a miracle. But he didn’t believe in miracles. ‘Are you hurt?’
‘No. Not badly. But my sister, Amy... I don’t know where she is. It’s pitch-black in here, I can’t see anything. The walls have collapsed and I’m trapped. Please, help us.’
‘Charli, Amy is okay. She wasn’t in the building.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Positive. I’ve seen her. I’ve spoken to her. I’ll get her here and you can talk to her.’ He could hear Charli sobbing with relief.
‘Don’t leave me.’
‘I won’t leave you. I promise. I’m going to get you out but you need to listen to me. It’s going to take time but I give you my word we will get you out.’ He did his best to sound reassuring but he had heard the wobble in her voice. He could only imagine what she was thinking, how she was feeling. It was a miracle that she’d been found and that she was, apparently, unharmed, but Pat knew they’d need another miracle to get her out before anything untoward happened.
There had been other casualties who had survived the landslide only to perish before they’d been able to rescue them, and those deaths weighed heavily on his conscience. He’d talked to those people but hadn’t been able to save them. He wasn’t going to let the same fate befall Charli.
He turned back to Connor and saw he already had his radio in his hand and was putting the call out. Within seconds their team was reassembling, along with the medical specialists and engineers who had been flown in to Wombat Gully. The chapel bells were ringing again and the noise level intensified as people poured out, buzzing with excitement as the news spread.
A survivor!
Pat could hear Connor briefing the teams. The site had been cordoned off but he knew that once news broke that a survivor had been located, the media would be pressing in as close as possible. Connor was issuing instructions to the police to expand the cordon to give them more privacy. They needed to be able to communicate with Charli and extraneous noise wasn’t going to be helpful.
Pat was handed a headset and a search cam, a thin, flexible pole with a camera on the end that could be fed through small gaps. ‘All right, Charli. We’re going to send a camera down to you. It’ll have a light on it and a microphone. I’ll be wearing a headset so you can talk to me. I’ll be listening.’
A hole needed to be drilled through the concrete in order to feed the camera through. The engineer tried to convince Pat to leave while he worked, worried about the slab taking their combined weight. ‘No. I’m staying,’ Pat argued. ‘Connor and I were both on the slab and it held. I need to be here.’
‘Charli.’ He spoke to her, letting her know their plans. ‘We need to drill a small hole to get the camera through. It’s going to get noisy for a few minutes but I’ll still be right here.’
The engineer used a diamond-tipped drill and made a small opening. Pat pushed the pole into the gap but the camera showed nothing. There was a small space but it was empty. There was no one in it.
Disappointment and frustration flooded through him. He’d been sure they were in the right place.
Pat spoke over his shoulder to the site engineer. ‘How many apartments were in this building?’
‘Twelve, four floors, three on each floor. You should be right above her.’
Pat checked the surroundings. Was there another floor under this slab? There didn’t look as though there was enough space. The concrete slab they had drilled through and the space he was looking at through the camera must only be a few feet off the ground. Where was she?
‘She’s got to be here. There must be a second slab. We’ll have to go through the next one.’ That had to be the only solution.
The engineer nodded and issued directives to Pat to pass on to Charli.
‘Charli, I think we’re right above you. We’re going to drill carefully through more concrete. It could be close to you. We’ll go slowly and stop regularly to check in with you. I need you to tell us if you’re worried about anything.’
‘How will I know? I can’t see.’
Pat knew that was a problem. They had to be careful and had no way of knowing where she was. They could be drilling right above her head. ‘Charli, are you sitting up or lying down?’ he asked.
‘I’m lying down, there’s not much room here.’
They needed more information. ‘Can you reach your hand above your head? How much space is there?’
‘Maybe a foot.’
‘What about around you?’
/> ‘I’m on the bed. There’s a wall to my left and maybe a few feet to my right and at the foot of the bed. I think the frame of the bed head is holding up the ceiling.’
‘Okay. That’s great, Charli, you’re doing well.’
He couldn’t continue the conversation while the engineers were drilling but they stopped every couple of minutes, giving him an opportunity to check in.
‘How are you doing, Charli?’
‘I’m okay. Cold and thirsty.’
‘I’ll buy you a hot chocolate when we get you out of here.’
‘Is that a promise?’
‘For sure.’ He should have insisted on buying her a drink on Friday night. Maybe then she would have still been in the bar when the landslide had occurred. Maybe then she would have been safe. He knew he couldn’t keep everyone safe but he wished he’d followed his heart. He promised himself he wouldn’t take the safe option next time. ‘You must be hungry too.’
‘I am. How long have I been stuck in here?’
‘About thirty-six hours.’
‘What? What day is it?’ she asked.
‘Sunday.’
‘Sunday! What time is it?’
‘Almost eleven in the morning.’
It had been nearly four hours since he’d come on shift. He wondered if he’d be made to leave when his shift ended. He knew that protocol dictated that he should, but he also knew he would argue against it. There was no way he was leaving the site until they’d got Charli out of there.
‘Okay, I think we’re almost there,’ he said. ‘The drilling’s going to start again.’
Another couple of minutes was all that was needed before the engineer gave Pat a thumbs-up.
‘I can see a tiny bit of light!’ Charli’s voice carried up to him.
They were through.
Pat fed the search cam through the next layer of concrete. When it emerged into the next space he could see a figure curled on a bed. They’d done it!
She was hugging her knees to her chest and she looked cold and vulnerable, but they’d found her and she was alive.
She was looking up into the camera and Pat barely recognised her. In the bar he’d been completely blind-sided by her beauty. She’d had the kind of face that stopped men in the street, a perfect oval framed by thick blonde hair, she’d had flawless skin and enormous blue eyes, but now her hair was matted and filthy, her face smeared with mud, and he could see a darker stain on the left side of her forehead. A bruise. Or maybe blood. Her eyes were pale and huge in her face and she looked terrified. He wanted desperately to get in there to comfort her. She looked as though she needed it.
Everything was covered with mud. Including Charli. The space was a mess, the bed was buckled and Pat could see a crushed wardrobe and what was possibly the remains of a bedside table. A lamp lay on the floor in the mud.
Charli was looking around and Pat wondered if the light was a mistake. Was it giving her more of an idea about the predicament she was in? Would seeing her surroundings add to the trauma?
‘Hey, there.’ Pat spoke through the microphone. ‘Can you hear me clearly?’
Charli turned her head back towards the camera. She couldn’t see him but it was obviously an instinctive move to turn towards the sound.
‘Yes.’ She nodded. ‘Can you get me out now?’
‘Can’t wait for that hot chocolate, hey?’
‘I’m cold.’
She gave him a half-smile and his spirits lifted. She was tough. He knew she’d pull through but he vowed to be there to help her. ‘We’ll get you out as soon as we can.’
Retrieving her was going to be a slow process but Pat was feeling truly positive for the first time since the disaster.
‘Is Amy there? Can I talk to her?’
‘Yes, of course.’ He’d seen Amy arrive on the scene. Someone had tracked her down. ‘Amy can’t come onto the site but I’ll take my headset to her. Give me a moment.’
He found Amy and passed the headset to her. It was probably a good idea to let her talk to her sister. While he didn’t want to think about the worst-case scenario there was no denying this whole exercise was risky and Pat knew it could go horribly wrong. He wasn’t going to deny the siblings the opportunity to talk. Who knew what could happen next?
Amy had tears streaming down her face as she put the headset on. ‘I’m sorry, Charli. I should have come home with you.’
He could only hear one side of the conversation but it was enough to give him the gist of it.
‘But at least we would have been together.
‘Are you hurt?
‘You’re sure?
‘I know. Okay. I’ll be waiting for you. I love you.’
Amy removed the headset and passed it back to Pat. ‘Promise me you’ll get her out,’ she pleaded. ‘She’s the only family I’ve got.’
‘I promise,’ he said as he signalled to one of his team members to swap places with him as he spoke again to Charli. ‘The engineers are going to continue to enlarge this opening and I’m going to hand over the communication to Dave, who’s also a paramedic, while I see what I can do about getting you warmed up.’ He knew she would be frozen. Everything looked wet or at least damp and there had been no heating. ‘Is that okay?’
‘Will you be back?’
‘Before you know it.’
Pat switched places with Dave. He wanted to have a discussion with Melissa Cartwright, the ED doctor who had been choppered in to Wombat Gully to co-ordinate any medical care. They needed a plan. A triage and stabilising centre had been set up in the resort medical centre but the first step before they could treat Charli was getting her out of there safely.
‘How do you think she’s doing?’ Melissa asked.
‘She seems lucid. No significant injuries. Cold and thirsty.’ Pat summarised what he knew so far. ‘It’s going to be a tricky extraction. There are two slabs of concrete above her and the engineers don’t think we can get in underneath without the risk of the whole structure collapsing. We’ll have to go through the slabs. It’s going to take time.’
‘Hypothermia is a risk,’ Melissa said. ‘We need to warm her up, get fluids into her, and we need to be able to monitor her condition.’
‘Okay, we’ll get some leads through as soon as possible.’ He turned to Connor. ‘Can you organise a bear-hugger?’
He waited for confirmation before he crawled back out onto the slab. He tapped Dave on the shoulder and slipped the headset back on, restoring communication with Charli.
‘Hey, there, Charli, it’s Pat. I’m back.’
* * *
Charli closed her eyes at the sound of Pat’s voice. Dave had tried to have a conversation with her but she didn’t have the energy to start over. She only had enough energy for Pat and she could feel herself relax now that he was back. She’d been edgy when he’d left. Even though another paramedic had taken his place she’d felt as though she’d lost the lifeline that tethered her to the world above. The world outside her tomb. She took a deep breath and opened her eyes.
‘You still doing okay?’ he asked.
His voice was deep and mellow and soothing. He sounded in control and that calmed her nerves. His voice made her feel safe.
She pictured his face, his smile that had made his eyes crinkle at the corners, the little scar under his left eye, and his messy, dark hair. She remembered the warmth of his hands on her elbows and wished he was with her now. She longed for some warmth and she longed for the touch of another person. More specifically, she found herself longing for him.
‘I’m good,’ she replied, which was a ridiculous thing to say given she was buried under tonnes of rubble. But at least she was alive. ‘But I’ll be better when you get me out of here.’ She knew he’d get her out. She trusted him.
‘That’s the way.’ She could hear the smile in
his voice and knowing she’d made him smile lifted her spirits. ‘All right, the engineers have made a hole large enough through both slabs that I can start passing some things down to you.’
The hole was above her chest. She could see light coming in but she couldn’t see out. She wriggled around on the bed so her face was underneath the hole. She could see blue sky. She winced and closed her eyes. The sky was far too bright after hours of darkness but she couldn’t resist slowly opening them once more because she had wondered if she’d ever see the sky again.
The sunlight dimmed as Pat’s face appeared in the hole, illuminated from below by the small light on the search cam.
‘Hello again.’
She smiled at the sight of him, pleased that his face was the first she would see. His dark hair was sticking out in all directions, wild and unruly. His jaw was covered in dark stubble and he was smiling at her, his teeth white against the darkness of his beard. His eyes crinkled at the corners and she was struck by the life in them and by their colour.
‘Your eyes are green!’
‘You do remember me, don’t you?’ he teased her, and she felt herself smiling properly in return. She hadn’t thought she’d ever feel like smiling again.
‘Yes, of course, but in the bar I thought your eyes were brown.’
His face disappeared all too suddenly. She wanted to call out and ask him to come back. She wanted to keep looking at him. She wanted one last chance to burn his face into her memory just in case things went wrong. But she was too slow. His face was gone from sight and her heart plunged in her chest. It was a stupid thing to be disappointed about as she knew, given her situation, that there were more important things for her to think about, but she really liked his face.
His hand was reaching down through the hole. The hole was small and it was a tight fit. His forearm filled the space. He could almost touch her. He was still within reach. All she had to do was lift her hand and she would have that connection. She reached up and held onto his fingers. He wasn’t wearing gloves and his hand was warm. Hers was freezing by comparison. He must have just removed his glove and she was grateful. She craved warmth. Her body craved the touch of another person. She remembered how she’d felt when he’d held her before. Twice he’d caught her, supported her and made her safe. She wished he was there with her now. Tears sprang to her eyes and she wiped them from her face with her other hand, pleased he couldn’t see her reaction through the tiny gap that his arm had filled.
