I admit defeat and follow Keller’s instructions, nodding, my nerves on a knife-edge.
My heart is pounding in my chest so hard because we’re so close to her yet she still feels so far away.
“Listen to me carefully, Eli.” Dexter’s crackled voice appears in my ears. “I’m almost there, twenty feet to go. She’s cold and wet, but your girl is smiling. Ten feet now.” Then. “Touchdown. I need to unclip myself and the stretcher. Be patient, Eli, I’ll have her on the stretcher and safe in no time.”
“Tell her I’m here for her, please, Dexter.”
Dexter calls out her name. “Sapphire, I’ve got you. You’re safe now. Eli is in the helicopter; he wanted you to know that.”
And then we’re blind to what’s happening below while Dexter secures Sapphire to the stretcher, talking her through the motions with kindness and calm.
Impatience makes my knee bounce like a jittery grasshopper, until eventually Dexter says the words I’ve been longing to hear. “We’re both secure. Safety equipment checked, start winching us up to a safe height and begin the return to base.”
“Nice work, Dexter,” Keller praises as Sapphire and Dexter dangle below us, and I wish she were in the helicopter with me, so I can see her, touch her, and tell her how much I love her.
Then Keller announces, “Base, line’s secure, tension good, lifting slowly, clear of debris, pulling her up, bringing her back.”
“Roger, KA-SAR1. Medical team standing by at Incident Command Post,” Base responds.
Keller confidently confirms, “Lifted now to safe height. ETA ten minutes. Over.”
I let my head fall back and exhale loudly.
My girl is safe.
“Thank you, Keller. Thank you, Dexter.” Relief tears through me, the surge racing, rushing, blinding, like fiber optic light bursting through my veins.
“You’re welcome, man.” Keller throws me a mock salute. “Now let’s get you reunited with your girl.”
Those eight small words are the best ones I’ve heard all day.
45
SAPPHIRE
When the stretcher touches the ground, I break down, lamenting and weeping enough tears to cause my own landslide.
I can’t stop, not even when the rescue team frees me from the helicopter stretcher and the EMTs lift me onto the gurney then cover me in another thermal blanket to warm me up. I can’t stop shaking. It’s something I don’t have control over.
A wave of relief washes over me as I finally arrive on solid ground, because the ground I’ve been trudging through for almost a day was slippery, precarious even.
After I took a tumble down the hillside, feeling sorry for myself, I thought spraining my ankle was bad enough but the worst of it was yet to come. When the second mudslide hit, I lost my boots and socks, both getting sucked under by the mud, and now my feet are covered in cuts and scratches that burn and ache as if they have tiny paper cuts all over them.
The mud’s not just on my feet; I’m covered in it from head to toe.
I take a quick look downward, noticing how the mud that once was soft and squelchy has fused between my toes, and is now hard and cracking like dry soil. I continue to cry for myself, and my swollen ankle that’s the same thickness as my calf, thinking about everything that’s happened since I stormed out of Eli’s office yesterday. That feels like such a long time ago now.
That second mudslide would have taken my life had I not remembered an article I read years ago that you can never outrun a mudslide; you have to run to the side. That’s exactly what I did: I ran sideways, never looking back as the valley behind me crumbled like a soft cookie. I was terrified as if I could feel it chasing after me like a demon on its way to drag me under.
I kept running through the trees until my lungs felt like they were on fire, only stopping when my ankle pain became unbearable, and I hobbled for what felt like hours but was only minutes.
When the mudslide finally stopped and the rain eased, I tried to climb back up the slope, but the more I fought, the further I slid, and with no shoes on to give me the grip I needed, combined with an excruciatingly painful ankle, I surrendered to the inevitable. Eventually, I worked my way down through the trees, each step unstable, feeling utterly sorry for myself, in shock, and in serious fight mode, until I found a tiny wooden lookout shack.
By then, it was too late to escape the cold. The darkness had already started to move in. Inside the shack, drenched to the bone, shivering as gusts of wind pierced the cracks in the wooden slats, I hugged my legs close, yet the eerie sounds of the forest kept me awake all night. The hooting owls, the sounds of snapping twigs, I never knew which direction they were coming from, and they kept me on edge.
Exhausted, my body empty of strength, I didn’t care and I fled at the first light of day in search of help to discover there was none.
So I moved as fast as I could, well, as fast as my sprained ankle would allow me to, limping unsteadily down the hill, making sure I stayed as far away as possible from the edges of the mudslide that carved a path of devastation far down into the valley and into the creek below.
