The jolt knocked them both to the ground.
It took a nanosecond for Trent to realize what was happening. This wasn’t a roll-over-and-go-back-to-sleep quake, this was a loud, plane-crashing-into-a-building quake. The sound inside the cave jolted him to his feet. Something was falling, somewhere. He caught sight of Monica who had been standing next to the entrance. She was now on the ground and rocks were falling.
She screamed. He found his feet and rushed to her side. The earth kept moving.
The light from the outside faded with a loud crash. All he could see was Monica being crushed by the falling rock.
When he reached her, he attempted to bring her to her feet to escape the falling rock. She grabbed his shoulders with terror in her eyes. Trent pulled her and she screamed.
Her right leg was pinned under a rock.
The earth grew quiet.
“It’s OK,” he told her. “I’m here.” Above her, the rock still crumbled. One small shake…
Trent peered through the now darkened cave, the only light came from the opening at the top, and he reached for the rock holding Monica in place. “I can’t move,” she cried.
He looked past the blood under the rock and grasped her leg with both hands. He pulled against it and more rock came down a few feet away.
Monica covered her face with her hands. Trent leaned over her to keep more rock from hitting her.
The dust settled and he pulled her hands away. “Listen. I’m going to dig. You’re going to have to push out when I lift the rock.” If he could lift the rock.
Her eyes were moist with unshed tears. “That was a big one, Trent. An aftershock…”
Was inevitable. He knew.
He dug around her leg like a madman. When he felt her leg shift in the sand, he wedged the rock to keep it from collapsing again.
“OK, I’m going to try the rock again. You ready?”
She nodded and rose up on her elbows and bent her good leg.
“One… two… three.” Trent heaved the rock. His back protested, his arms were on fire, and the rock wasn’t moving.
He kept trying, sweat poured off his brow.
Monica’s hand stopped him. “That’s not going to move. We need to dig.”
She sat up as best she could and helped him dig the sand away from her leg. He didn’t even want to think of the pain she must be in. There was blood dripping down her calf, he couldn’t see the rest of her foot under the rock.
As they dug, the rock sank into her leg and the hole. Monica cried out twice as the rock shifted. Trent kept digging. Just as he felt they were getting her loose, the aftershock hit.
Terror took the place of reason and Trent shoved her leg to the space he’d dug out as the rocks started to move again. He saw her toes and reached for her shoulders to pull her away.
Monica screamed.
Several feet from the cave opening, he collapsed with Monica in his lap.
Rock filled the space where she had been trapped.
His arms surrounded her, both of them too shocked to move.
Only when she whimpered did he release the vise grip he had on her.
“It’s OK. You’re safe.” Only again, he wasn’t sure of that either. They were in a cave and a ton of rock separated them from the outside world. The steep walls of the cave didn’t give him a means to climb out from the top and Monica wasn’t in any shape to walk, let alone climb.
“Save the white lies for someone who’s good at them, Barefoot.”
He hugged her again and felt her shiver. They were both caked with sand and dirt and he hadn’t even assessed her leg yet. After scurrying out from under her, he attempted to look at the damage.
“It’s broken,” she said before he even looked.
“Are you sure?” It wasn’t obvious to him looking at it. There was a gash where the rock had fallen on it and it was swelling rapidly. But there wasn’t a bone sticking out where it shouldn’t be… that had to be a good thing.
Monica glanced behind them to the pool of water. “I need to get the dirt out of there.”
He lifted her as gently as he could and settled her next to the pool. He found the bag he packed for their day, thankful it wasn’t on the outside of the cave, and removed the towels from inside. With painstaking slowness, he helped Monica take the surface dirt off her wound. They both had scrapes but other than the one on her leg, none were terribly deep. At one point she shoved the towel in his hand and leaned back. “You’re going to have to do the rest.”
“Do the rest?”
She swallowed. “Scrub the rest out.” Her color went white just saying it.
“That’s going to hurt.”
“Has to be done.”
“You sure?”
“I won’t scream if you don’t.” She attempted to joke, but he knew she was hurting.
I can do this. He cleaned the edge of the towel with the water from the pool. “Hold on.”
She gripped his shoulder.
By the time he was done, there were nail marks in his skin and Monica was ghost white. It took some time, but he soon managed to clean her off and get her dressed. She had a small roll of tape and exactly three gauze pads in her backpack. “Never leave home without it,” she told him.
She’d been taking prophylactic antibiotics since she arrived on the island, so that was one less worry.
One less.
Neither of them spoke the obvious until after Trent managed to arrange Monica on the beach blanket.
“Now what?”