Second Chance Love (15 page)

Slowly, carefully, Elizabeth opened the scissors on the jack, pushing the debris mound a little higher. As she did, she turned and saw Bayani coming down the path. He carried an axe and a toolbox, but no chainsaw.

“It was ruined,” he explained. “Are they okay?”

“They’re fine. Look,” she said, pointing to her handiwork, “I’ve been widening the hole. I think we can use the rope to lift them up.”

Bayani gaped at the system Elizabeth had set up, then smiled broadly. “You must be an engineer!”

“Actually, I sell books. But I read a lot, and that helps me think.”

Bayani grabbed the coiled rope and tied a loop at one end. He leaned cautiously over the hole and gave instructions in Tagalog. Chona seemed to agree, and Bayani began to uncoil the rope into the hole. After another brief exchange, he turned to Elizabeth. “They’re not that deep. Only about two meters. It’s possible that they could climb out, but it might loosen more of the rubble and cause it to fall in, so I will lift them. Chona will send Danilo up first.”

“I can help. We don’t want the rope to slip.”

“Yes. Thank you.” Then, turning back to the opening, he said in English, “Is he ready? Use English, Chona, so our friends can understand.”

“Yes. Are you sure this will be okay?”

“Yes, we’ll be fine.” Bayani checked the rope to make sure it wasn’t snagged on anything, made room for Elizabeth to take her place on the rope, and they pulled together. Danilo, only two, wasn’t heavy. Seconds later, Bayani reached down to hoist him bodily from the mouth of the opening. The boy blinked at the sun’s brightness.

“I’ve got him!” Bayani shouted down, then grabbed his son and held him close, laying his lined face atop the dirty hair. When he pulled back, tears were cutting streaks in the dirt on his face.

Two minutes later, the scene was repeated with Tala, and there were three on the surface and only two below. Childhood amnesia soon set in, and Danilo and Tala began playing and running around with Payaso. Bayani looked down, selected a position from which he could brace. "She doesn't look very heavy," said Elizabeth.

“She is small, but if we slip and drop her, it will be very bad. There is solid concrete here that we can use to brace against." Elizabeth took a solid stance, refusing to look down at the blisters she felt on palms unused to the friction of heavy labor. Bayani nodded, and they lowered the rope a third time.

Bayani's physics proved sensible. When Chona called up that she was ready, Bayani nodded to Elizabeth, and they pulled. Even a petite adult woman put much more strain on both the rope and the people pulling on it. Bayani braced his foot against the remaining foundation and pulled with everything he had left. The muscles in his arms stood out like cords, strained to their limit. Behind him, Elizabeth took her firmest possible grip, squatted with her feet braced against solid concrete, and stood up leaning backward. Finally Chona’s head and shoulders appeared, and she was able to participate by taking hold of a concrete protrusion. Bayani rushed forward, slipped his strong arms underneath hers, and plucked her out like a baby being lifted from a crib.

Bayani, Chona, Tala, and Danilo formed a spontaneous hug with Payaso dancing and barking around them. Elizabeth slumped to the grass, spent. It thrilled her to see the family reunited, but her work was not done.

While they celebrated, Elizabeth went back to the edge of the hole. Without taking time to think about it, she slipped her legs over the edge and jumped.

Chapter Twenty-Four

The six feet down felt like more as she was falling, and again as she hit. She landed awkwardly on a heap of rubble and fell forward, scraping her right leg against a piece of shattered concrete. It was much darker than she had anticipated, with the near-total darkness broken only by the one shaft of brilliant light from above.

“Elizabeth? Oh, why did you go down there?” Bayani called down, reproachfully.

“I’ve got to find Steve. Once I do, we’ll find a way to get him out.”

“I am coming down, too.”

“Stop! Don’t you dare. If you are down here, who will lift us out? Please. Stay there.”

Bayani didn’t reply, but he didn’t jump down.

As her eyes adjusted to the dark, Elizabeth could see the small clearing where Chona had nested down with Tala and Danilo for three days. Three beams had come to rest crisscrossed above the area, creating a safe zone that had saved their lives.

Elizabeth tried to reconstruct what had happened when Steve had attempted his rescue. To her left, a mound rose almost high enough to reach the fallen floor from above. Almost, but not quite. She tentatively climbed the pile, but there wasn’t enough room for her to see if there was anything on the other side. She moved a board and it slid away, taking more with it. She held her breath, waiting to see if she had brought the whole mess down on her head, but nothing else happened.

That maneuver bought her enough room to push her head up and over. The other side was almost entirely cloaked in darkness, but in the far corner she made out the shape of a body. She reached in her back pocket, retrieved her phone and turned it on. The screen's sudden brightness temporarily blinded her. She scrolled through the list of applications, few of which she had ever considered using, and found one with a picture of a flashlight. A few seconds later, light from her phone illuminated the chamber.

Steve.

He was laying on his left side, his right arm draped over his head. He appeared to be breathing steadily, but his eyes were closed.

She pushed her head through the opening, then wriggled her shoulders and gave a little push with her legs. That got her over the pile, and she rolled down its far side. The ceiling was too low to stand, so she crawled the few feet to the other side of the room.

She touched his face, then leaned down and kissed his dusty lips.

“I hope that I’m hallucinating and that you didn’t really climb down here to come after me.”

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly as relief flooded through her.

“Oh, I didn’t come after you. I think you’ve got the charger for my Kindle in your pocket. I needed that for the plane flight home.”

“And you say
I’m
never serious?”

“Okay, then, this is serious. I was not leaving here without you, any more than you would have left without me.”

He paused for a moment. “Fair enough. So what do we do now?”

“Can you move?”

“I tried a little while ago, but I got dizzy and threw up. By the way, watch where you step around here. I hope it ran down into the water.”

“Well, we’re going to have to try again. I’m not strong enough to carry you out of here. For now, rest. I’m going to try and clear some more space so we can get you up and over. If we get you on the other side, I think we can get you out of here.”

Steve gave a wan smile, tried to nod, then gave it up as a bad bit of business. He laid his head back down against his arm.

Elizabeth crawled up the mound and called up to Bayani. "I don't think he's badly hurt. I can move some of the debris away and help him over to where we can get him out. It may be a while; there's a lot of junk down here."

"Please be careful, Elizabeth. It is very dangerous down there," answered Bayani. Elizabeth promised to do so, climbed back down the pile, and got started. She began picking and choosing broken pieces of concrete and wood that she discarded, like a life or death game of Jenga. After close to an hour’s work, she had cleared what she hoped was enough space for Steve to crawl through, even in his weakened condition.

For once in his life, he had been mostly quiet while she worked. Elizabeth didn’t know if he was conserving his strength, or just drifting in and out of consciousness. Either way, it was time to move.

She crawled back to Steve, touched his shoulder, and said, “Steve, honey. Let’s get out of here.”

“Just five more minutes, Mother, then I’ll get in the shower, I promise.”

He lifted his head and tried to sit up, swaying a little as he tried to find his balance.

“I think the best thing to do is for you to go first. I’ve cleared out an area at the top that you should be able to crawl through. Try not to push up against the ceiling when you crawl through. It’s not all that stable. I’ll be right behind you, and I can at least help boost you up.”

Steve nodded, turned over onto all fours, tried to steady himself, then started the slow climb up the hill. Each little movement sent more debris tumbling behind him and onto Elizabeth. He had to stop and rest several times. When he did, Elizabeth just laid her hand against his leg to let him know she was still there.

When he finally reached the top, he said weakly, “I’ve always believed that behind every successful man was a woman pushing him. You’ve just proven it.” He wedged himself into the opening, pushed off with his feet, and Elizabeth saw him disappear and tumble down the other side with a soft cry of pain.

She scrambled up and over, to find Steve half-sitting up, the beam of light from above shining directly into his face. He was smiling broadly and turning his face gently from side to side, as if he had believed he would never see the sun again.

Ten minutes later, after nearly exhausting everyone's strength, Steve and Elizabeth were sprawled out on the ground, safe at last.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Once the party had energy to take inventory of injuries, the news was mostly good. Everyone was a little battered, but no one had life-threatening injuries. Bayani, Chona, Tala, and Danilo were all dehydrated, but had only scrapes and bumps beyond that. Chona also had a deep bruise in her right shoulder, suffered while protecting her children when the ceiling had collapsed, but it would heal. Elizabeth had a bloody contusion on her right leg from her tumble into the basement, but Chona had cleaned and bandaged it. Steve was the worst off, with scrapes and bruises over most of his body and a gash over his right temple. A concussion was certain, probably a severe one, but he could walk if he took it very easy. Only Payaso had made it through the experience unscathed.

By the time they made their way to the clearing where their supplies were, the sun was low in the sky. The road, poor even during the light of day, would be impassable at night. They would have to remain until morning. Elizabeth's apprehension began to fade when Bayani built a bonfire on the beach to keep the bugs at bay. Chona managed to recover an old cast iron skillet from the debris of her kitchen, and fried enough Spam over the fire to feed them all twice over.

“The next time you come to Palawan, I will make you pork adobo and pancit, with Tanduay rum to drink,” Chona said, smiling. “Spam is good, but adobo is heaven, and I use my mother's recipe.”

"It is the best adobo on Palawan," Bayani added.

"What's pancit?" Steve asked. The C was soft.

"Filipino style noodles," said Bayani. "I think there are as many ways of making pancit as there are wives in the Philippines. Everyone is very fond of Chona's pancit with chicken."

"Definitely a step up from Spam!" said Elizabeth with a smile.

After eating as much Spam as they could, and washing it down with bottled water, Bayani and Chona took the children for a walk down the beach in the deepening twilight. They said they wanted to see the damage from another angle, but Chona's enigmatic smile hinted to Elizabeth that their new friends just wanted to give them some privacy.

And we now have friends, as a couple,
thought Elizabeth.
If we lived near them, we would have them over. Chona would teach me how to make this adobo stuff.

Elizabeth sat by the fire, leaning comfortably against a smooth log. Steve lay with his head resting in her lap, staring up at the brilliant array of stars above. A full moon rode low in the sky, bathing the whole beach in silvery light, while the waves coming ashore provided a quiet soundtrack.

“Look at this place,” Steve said, his voice wistful. “Can you imagine what it would have been like?”

Elizabeth looked around, ignoring the crumbled buildings, roads and fences behind them, and said, “I don’t know if it could have ever been anything better than what I see right now.”

Steve smiled, but ruefully. “I’m glad we came. It was the right thing to do. It’s given me something to focus on besides my crumbling company. When we get back, I’m going to be overseeing the dismantling of everything I’ve worked for.”

Elizabeth nodded. “And I will be right there with you. I can’t help with that, but I can make sure that we find things to laugh about. When it’s all done, no matter how it turns out, we’ll have each other. I never wanted anything else from you, but you.”

Steve nodded thoughtfully, then lifted his head and kissed Elizabeth long and slow.

“Not exactly what we had in mind for our 4
^th
of July picnic, but when you kiss me like that, I still see fireworks.”