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?”
Trent removed his cell phone from his pack.
“No service.”
The expression on Monica’s face didn’t change. “I didn’t think there would be in here. Did you tell Reynard where we were going?”
Trent shook his head. “He’ll know something’s wrong when we don’t come home.”
“The clinic staff will call Walt.”
Trent wedged himself between her and the wall and gave her someone to lean on. “We have some food. Water.”
Monica nodded.
“Someone will find us.”
Someone would. The question not asked was when.
Chapter Fourteen
If I don’t move… if I don’t breathe. It didn’t matter what she did, her leg hurt like a bitch and there was no escaping it. She had six ibuprofen and antibiotics, though probably not the ones she needed, to last for a couple of days. The water in the pool was fresh but neither she nor Trent thought it was a good idea to drink from it. Not right away in any account.
“You know those little white lies you’re against telling?” she asked Trent as night fell and the light from above started to fade.
“Yeah?”
“I need you to tell me we’re going to be OK even if you think we’re not.” There weren’t many times in her life when Monica had been scared. This was one of them. What if no one found them? What would they do when they ran out of food?
“My car is on the road. Someone will spot it.”
She didn’t want to remind him that the road had appeared abandoned. And it wasn’t as if the islanders were looking for places to play these days. Most were just trying to survive.
“How did that earthquake compare to the first one?” she asked.
“Hard to say,” his soothing voice said in her ear. “My house made a lot of noise but the walls didn’t come down.”
Her vision was adjusting to the darkness of the cave but it was still impossible to make out the entrance.
“The first one could have loosened those rocks. Made it easier for them to fall this time.” At least his words sounded good to her ears.
Trent shifted beside her and she sat up. “You should lie down. That wall on your back can’t be comfortable.”
“Sitting up will keep me awake.”
Monica couldn’t make out his expression in the dark. She rested her hand on his chest in hopes of comforting him. His voice was tight and his entire frame was rigid. “We might as well try and sleep. Even when Reynard realizes you’re not coming home, it will take time for the clinic to get word to the doctors and for anyone to actually search for us. No one is going to spot your car in the dark.”
Trent sighed and shifted his weight down from the wall. Monica had her leg propped up on her backpack and Trent used a rolled-up towel for a pillow. She used his shoulder as hers.
Once she was snug against his chest, and as comfortable as she could be for a night in a cave with a broken leg, she attempted to close her eyes.
She could tell that Trent was just as awake as she.
“You know,” she whispered, “before the earthquake and the wall crashing down on me, I was having a really good time.”
Her chest rumbled with his soft laugh. “I know how to show a girl a good time.”
“I didn’t think it would be possible to have any desirable memories from this crazy week.”
“And now you’re stuck in a cave all because I wanted you to myself.”