Mother's Promise (45 page)

“Is he alive?”

His mom wrapped her arm around Justin's shoulder. “We don't know yet. Pray that he is.”

“I see him,” the soldier yelled.

“Can you reach him?” another man shouted in Spanish, gesturing as he made his way across the rubble, trying hard not to disturb the loose rock.

The soldier shook his head.

The crowd groaned.

The boy's mother lay on her stomach as she edged closer and closer to the small opening. “Raoul,” she said, her voice husky now, like she might cry.

The men worked together through the long, hot afternoon, but it seemed everything that they tried only caused the ground to shift and the opening they had made to get smaller.

Around suppertime, a truck rolled into the village and most of the people went to unload the supplies. “Go help the others,” Justin's mom said, urging him away from the scene playing out on the rock pile. “Go on,” she said, turning him toward the truck and giving him a little push.

“Mom? Is Raoul going to make it?”

“We must pray that he will,” she said.

But Justin wasn't sure prayer was going to work in this case.

Rachel found herself wishing Ben was with them. He would know what to do, she was certain of it. Somehow he would find a way to reach the boy, treat him, and bring him to the surface. But Ben was not there.

Instead, Mary introduced Rachel and Hester to the new arrivals—three medical students. “I was filling them in on the situation out there.” Mary jerked her head in the general direction of the rubble pile.

“The mother has great faith even now,” Rachel said. She saw how the medical students followed her gaze up to the place where the boy had been buried now for almost two days. The mother still lay on her stomach staring down at her son.

“What's keeping them from bringing the boy up?” one student asked.

“The opening is very narrow, and the terrain surrounding it is still so unstable,” Rachel told him. “They do not want to try anything until they are certain that they will not cause another cave-in. Soon it will be dark and they will stop for the night—but his mother will stay with him.”

“We have lights,” another of the students said, more to himself than to Rachel.

“Let's go,” the third added as he took the knapsack that held his medical supplies and a large LED lantern from the truck. “If they can't get him out, then maybe we can figure out how to get a man down there. If by some miracle he is still alive, then he's got to be badly dehydrated.”

Rachel followed the group to where the rescuers stood helplessly off to the side as the woman repeated her son's name over and over again, her voice now no more than a whisper.

After consulting with the rescue team, using Juan Carlos as their interpreter, one of the medical students edged his way carefully toward the opening. “You're the nurse?”

Rachel nodded.

“Come with me.”

With every step, a trickle of pebbles tumbled down the slope. The young man would freeze waiting for everything to settle before pressing on. At the base of the pile, Rachel saw the workers setting up more lights and focusing the beams on the path that she and the medical student must take to reach the opening. Isabel sat up, watching them come.

“I cannot see him,” she said. “It's so dark.”

At last, Rachel and the young doctor made it to the opening and sat down. “Then let's throw a little light down there, okay?” He tied a rope to a thin but powerful flashlight and slowly lowered it into the crevice. The rescuers had not been kidding when they said the opening was impossibly narrow. There was no way that any of the men could make it down there.

“Raoul?” Isabel called. “The doctor is here now. Just hang on a little longer. The doctor will save you.”

“I can't see anything,” the doctor admitted. He scooted to one side. “You try.”

Rachel settled herself between him and Isabel then lay prone as she edged her way over the lip of the crevice. The light swung like a pendulum as the med student lowered it as far as the rope allowed. She could see the boy. He was on his back, one leg straight and the other at an angle. His hands, white with the dust of the rubble that surrounded him, were resting against his chest. He wore a dark T-shirt and shorts.

Rubbing sweat from her own eyes, Rachel studied the boy, searching for signs of life that she prayed she might find. And then she thought she saw the slightest twitch of the boy's eyelids and lips. Surely it was a mirage, a longing for the boy to have made it when there was almost no possibility that he could have.
Please.

She waited, forcing her breathing to steady. Then, seeing no more signs of life, she considered how best to break the news to Isabel. Suddenly one of the boy's hands moved toward his face—less than an inch—but this was no mirage.
He's alive,
she thought incredulously. Never in her life had she witnessed a miracle. Yet this child had been lying at the bottom of this pit with no food or water for two days now, the extent of his injuries—especially the internal ones—unknown and still he was alive. She shouted the news to those gathered above her.

She sat up, felt Isabel grasp her shoulder, and then carefully lowered as much of her upper body as possible into the opening for a closer look. Now the boy's hand was thrown across his eyes, so there was no doubt that he was alive.

“Raoul, lie still. We're going to get you out,” she promised and closed her eyes tight for a moment as she sent up a prayer of thanksgiving. The odds against getting this child to the surface in time were still astronomical. It would take hours—perhaps days.
Please. He's made it this far. Don't let us fail him now.

She felt a hand on her back and turned her head to find Isabel and the med student both leaning in close. “He's really alive?”

Rachel nodded as she pulled herself back to the edge and faced Isabel. “Your son is alive,” she told her, “but he is very weak. We need to get him medical attention and fluids as soon as possible.”

Isabel nodded, her tears flowing freely now, her smile radiant even in the darkness that surrounded them. She leaned closer to the opening, her hand extended as if to touch her son so many feet below her. “We are coming, Raoul. I promise you … we will come.”

“Do you think we can get to him in time?” the medical student asked Rachel.

“We must. Isabel has given her son her promise, and we mothers do not make promises we cannot keep.”

By morning the trio of medical students had rigged up tubing by which they could send down a trickle of water for Raoul, but even in the rare moments when he was conscious the boy was too weak and disoriented to follow their instructions. An engineer was studying the area, trying to decide the best way to get to the boy without causing the rubble around him to collapse. And at the base of the earthquake-created hill, everyone else gathered to pray and sing, hoping to keep up the spirits of the rescuers as well as provide comfort for Raoul and Isabel.

Rachel could not stop thinking about the boy. The place where he lay was not so very deep. There was a jagged piece of concrete jutting out from a wall of rubble that prevented them from getting all the way down to where he lay. One of the medical students had actually climbed down to the thin ledge, but his report was not good. He had been unable to reach Raoul, and unless they could get past the barrier …

Rachel closed her eyes.
There has got to be an answer,
she prayed.
Show us the way.

Two rescuers walked past her on their way back to their trucks to gather more supplies. “If we had a kid—a skinny kid …”

“You can't ask any kid to go down there,” his companion argued. “What if the whole thing caves in? Then we've lost two kids, devastated two families.”

Rachel opened her eyes, pressing her palms down the front of her apron. Suddenly she stared down at her hands, stilling them on her body—her thin-as-a-boy's body. Could she make it past the barrier? And if she could, wasn't she the next best person to reach Raoul first? To administer the emergency care he so badly needed? To check him for injuries not readily evident from their vantage point at the top of the hole that held him?

“Justin!” She beckoned for her son to join her in the tent the staff used as their sleeping quarters. Inside the tent she pulled out a pair of her son's jeans and a shirt. “Sit there,” she said, indicating the cot next to his. “I need to talk to you while I change.” She pulled closed the curtain that hung between cots to give herself a little privacy and began laying out her plan while she changed into Justin's clothes.

“But Mom, it's dangerous. Let me go.”

Rachel's heart swelled with love for him. She pulled back the curtain, her change of dress causing his eyes to widen in surprise. “You are such a brave young man.”

“You look—different.” He glanced toward the top of her head and then to the starched white prayer covering lying on the cot.

“Ja.” She knelt next to him and took his hands in hers. “I have asked a great deal of you since your father died, Justin.”

“But …”

She pulled him close and stroked his hair as she continued, “And if you had not asked to come—to be a part of this youth mission, then just think … We would not have been here.”

“And you would not be doing this,” Justin argued.

“Time is wasting, Justin. Tell me you understand why I need to try.”

He sighed. “Because like Raoul's mom or Sally's, you can't stand seeing any kid in trouble. It's a mom thing.” His voice dripped with resignation. He straightened and faced her squarely. “But I'm going to be there and if there's any chance at all that …”

“I'll be tethered to a rope—they'll pull me out if anything starts to go wrong,” she said.

“Promise?”

“Promise.” She waited. If he begged her not to go she wouldn't. Justin had already lost one parent, and he was right to be concerned about the possible danger. “If you don't want …”

“Maybe this is why we came here, Mom. Do you think maybe this is why God sent us here?”

She had never loved her child more than she did in that moment. “I don't know. What does your heart tell you?”

“Go,” he said as he wrapped his arms around her and held on. “Please come back safe, okay?”

To Rachel's relief, Hester and the others from their church had gone to get their lunches in the mess tent when she made her way up to the opening on the rock pile. It was going to be a lot easier to convince the rescue team that she was the perfect candidate to go and get the boy than it would ever be to convince her friends.

And sure enough, they had already rigged her to the necessary climbing apparatus and begun to lower her into the hole when she heard Pastor Detlef's stern voice. “Bring her out of there—now.”

She found her footing on the cleft of concrete and looked up. “It's okay, Pastor. I'm here. Now what?”

On a separate rope, the medical team lowered down a canvas bag that they had packed with emergency medical supplies and water. Lying flat on her stomach, she lowered the bag past the jagged edges of her fragile platform and down to where Raoul lay. He was so still, and there had been almost no sign that he was still alive for hours now.

“Okay,” she reported, feeling the dust fill her lungs. “Going now.” She paused for a moment to gather her wits and heard the faint strains of a favorite Christmas carol sung in harmony. She smiled. It was Christmas Eve. Surely God would be with them on this of all days.

She was halfway between Raoul below her and the ledge above when the rope caught on one of the jagged edges. For an instant she was left dangling, swinging back and forth the way the flashlight had the night before. She was surrounded by the ominous sound of rock coming loose. Instinctively she covered her head with her arms as a trickle of stones and dust pelted her from above.