‘He can’t.’
Anna had sunk down onto a fallen log, and she was shaking in fear. ‘He’s hurting now. He only has to twist…’
‘He’s a sensible kid.’ Jonas was still holding her, but his face was as white as her own.
‘He’s only eight. And he’s hurt.’
They knew she was right. Everyone there knew she was right. The chances of Sam staying still for the long hours this would take were slim to non-existent.
And then Em took a deep breath. How wide had Jim said the narrow part of the shaft was?
‘Let me see,’ she said. She took Jim’s torch before he could protest and crawled across the planking to see for herself. She was very careful, holding the torch clear from the shaft so she could see without dislodging anything.
And she saw exactly what Jim had described. A narrowing fifteen feet down, not wide enough to let a man through, but wide enough to let Sam slip though into the wider chamber beyond and then into the next narrowing.
Not big enough to let a man through…
‘Jim, how wide is that blockage at fifteen feet?’ she asked in a strained voice. ‘Can we find out exactly?’
‘I guess.’ Jim was watching her from the side of the planking. ‘I have instruments in the truck that can do it.’
‘Then find out for me,’ Em told him. ‘If it’s wider than my shoulders, I’m going down.’
It took a lot of persuading-about half an hour of constant pressure. There wasn’t a man there who wasn’t horrified at the thought of anyone, much less a woman, going down the shaft.
But there was no choice, and all of them knew it.
‘It’ll take hours for you to get the machinery in place, much less start digging,’ Em told them. ‘Sam’s growing quieter by the minute. He’s in shock. He needs a drip to keep his blood pressure up, he needs pain relief and, above all else, he needs someone near him. You tell me there’s a slight ledge beside his head where the wall’s moved…’
‘We don’t know how stable it is.’
‘I won’t put weight on it. I’ll just use it to lever myself into position. If you can harness me, I’ll be held from above and all my weight can stay on the harness. I’ll wear a hard hat and I’ll take another down for Sam.’ She looked around at the group of strained faces. ‘Please,’ she said. ‘It’s the only hope he has of surviving.’
They didn’t like it. They didn’t like it one bit. But they measured the width of the narrow part of the shaft. It’d fit Em’s shoulders with an inch to spare.
And it wouldn’t fit anyone else but a child.
‘There you go, then,’ Em told them. ‘It finally pays to be skinny. So rig me up and get me down there.’
‘Em…’ It was Jonas, and his face was etched harshly with strain. ‘The shaft-it’s moved already with the landslip. God knows how stable it is. Hell, you can’t-’
She couldn’t get emotional. ‘Do you have any other ideas, Dr Lunn?’
‘You realise the whole thing could collapse?’
‘Yeah, that’s just what Anna wants to hear,’ she snapped. ‘And me, too. So forget it. It’s not going to happen. If you lower me down so slowly I’m hardly moving, I’ll keep my hands away from the walls and I’ll put no pressure on anything. I’m not adding to that risk very much at all.’
‘You’re putting two lives in danger instead of one.’
‘Then dig fast,’ she told him calmly, much more calmly than, in fact, she was feeling. ‘And rescue both of us.’
‘Oh, Em.’ Anna was clutching Matt for mutual comfort, but she put her little boy down and came forward to give her doctor a hug. ‘If you’d really do this for us…’
Em hugged her back. And then she stepped away, and looked to Jim. She needed to move fast here before she lost her courage.
She really wasn’t that brave!
‘I need equipment,’ she told the men. ‘Can you organise a line so we can hoist things up and down to me? Medical equipment. Food and water if I want it. Whatever I need.’
‘We can do that.’ It was Jonas, and she had the overriding impression that he was close to tears. ‘Em, you realise it could be tomorrow before we get Sam out. You’ll be down there until then. We daren’t risk pulling you up and down again.’
‘Once I’m down, I’m down to stay,’ she agreed, ‘so let’s get this right first off.’
‘Em…’
‘What?’
Nothing. He stared at her for a long, long minute, while all the impossibilities crowded in on him.
But there was no choice and he knew it. Without Em, they’d surely lose Sam.
But maybe they’d lose both of them.
He couldn’t bear it, and his face showed that to her, too. If he could have cut off his shoulders to do this himself, he would have, she realised, and the thought inexplicably warmed her.
But she was the only one who would fit, and he was forced to let her go.
‘Em,’ he said again, and there was a whole depth of meaning-of longing, of fear and of love-behind his words. ‘Love…’
And he took the two steps toward her. There was no choice about what he did then either.
He took her into his arms and he kissed her.
And then, after a contact so precious neither of them could realise just what it meant, he put her away from him, like a man preparing himself for a nightmare worse than anyone could imagine.
‘Stay safe,’ he whispered, and Em knew right then and there that his words were a plea for himself-not for her.
What followed was a nightmare.
Em’s descent was prepared with as much care as the men could possibly muster. They planked the entire top of the shaft, fitting a net to catch any rubble before it fell. Then they widened the entrance so it was large enough to fit Em, and also so it was dead centre of the narrow gap fifteen feet down.
‘Because you have to drop straight down,’ she was told. ‘You mustn’t sway. We can rig the harness so you drop vertically and then we can pull the harness up so you’re in a sitting position once you’re there, but you have to slip through that gap without touching the sides. If you can’t do that, you risk dislodging…’
There was no need to tell her more. She knew what she risked.
So finally, hard-hatted and overalled, placed in a harness that spread her weight through her entire body and wearing a carefully packed medical pouch around her midriff, she was gently lowered through the hole.
The last thing she remembered seeing as she looked up at the people surrounding her was Jonas.
And his face was desperate.
‘Sam…’
The little boy was barely conscious. Em had been whispering to him as she descended, focusing on not touching the walls but also intent on not frightening the child into jerking when he realised she was there. He hadn’t responded. Now, though, she was within inches of him.
There was a ledge-about ten inches wide or so-on either side of his head. Em shone her torch down to see how Sam was held, and her heart sank.
How had he not slipped through? He was so far through now. One more slip…
There was his head, his hair still bright red and curly, but that was about all that was recognisably Sam. He’d scratched himself falling. His face was bloody and tear-stained, and as white as death.
‘Sam.’
His sightless eyes suddenly focused. He couldn’t look up but, seated in her harness above him, Em’s hand was on his head, gently running her fingers through his curls. Her voice was urgent.
‘Sam, even though I’m here now, you’re not to move an inch. In case you fall further. You understand, Sam?’
‘I…’ He gulped. ‘Yes.’ He was brave to the core. ‘I understand.’
‘But at least I’m here. I won’t leave you.’
‘Mum. Uncle Jonas,’ he whispered. ‘I want them.’