The Doctors’ Baby

CHAPTER TEN

THE mineshaft was about half a mile from Anna’s house, back in the hills merging into the national park. Gold had been found here a hundred years ago and mine after mine had been sunk, but gradually most of them had been filled in. Some of the bigger ones had been professionally capped, but this one…

Someone had capped it, Anna told them, speaking between sobs of sheer terror, but they’d used only rough timber. Over time the timber had become covered with bush litter, the wood had rotted and Sam had stepped on the wrong spot and plunged down.

‘And I never would have found him if Matt hadn’t been with him and come to get me.’ Anna subsided into tears on Em’s shoulder, and Em held her tightly. Willing her strength…

As well as the terror she was facing, Anna was close to exhaustion, having run to the shaft when Matt had come home screaming for his mother and then run back to the house to telephone Em and Jim. Now she was in the cab of Jim’s fire engine, wedged between Em and Jim while the fire chief gunned the truck across the paddocks.

Beside Anna, Jim’s face was grim. Like Em, he’d flown to Anna’s assistance at the first call. He knew how lethal these mine shafts could be.

‘Are you sure he’s down there?’ The fire chief’s voice was curt and filled with concern.

‘Matt saw him fall. He raced straight away to find me, and I ran all the way there. He’s down there all right. And he’s conscious. I’ve spoken to him. But he sounds so deep. He’s fallen so far.’ She choked back a sob.

‘And I had to leave Matt there,’ she whispered as she fought to collect herself. ‘I know he’s too little to leave while I came for help, but it took us ages to find the hole again and I was scared Sam might stop calling. I couldn’t leave Sam alone. If he can’t call out there’s no way we’d find where the shaft was.’

She broke right down then, and Em’s hand came out to take hers. Anna was very close to breaking point anyway. So much had happened to her over the last month.

And now this…

‘You did the right thing, Anna,’ she told her strongly. ‘Now leave the rest to us.’

She had no choice. She’d left Ruby with a neighbour. Once again, Anna had needed to ask for help, but she wasn’t holding back. She wanted Em, and she wanted Jim and she wanted anyone else who could help. And especially…

‘Jonas,’ she whispered. ‘Where’s Jonas? I need him.’

Now there was an admission!

‘Lou’s contacting him now,’ Em told her. ‘He was out doing a house call but he’ll meet us there.’

‘As soon as we find the shaft, I’ll send a man back to bring him through the hills,’ Jim said curtly, still concentrating on not overturning the truck. The last thing they wanted was to hit a shaft themselves, but the ground here was clear enough. When they reached the rough country they’d have to get out and walk. Slowly.

‘The kids know this isn’t safe,’ Jim said, and it was as if he was speaking to himself. His voice was grim with foreboding. ‘I’ve told them that, over and over.’

He sounded just like a parent, Em thought. He sounded as frantic as Anna was herself. She looked at the pair of them, and they looked like partners. If only Anna would see it.

But she wasn’t concentrating on partnerships now.

‘I did, too.’ Anna took a deep breath. ‘But the boys were mad with me.’

‘Why?’

‘They overheard Jim asking if he could take them to the motor show in Blairglen next week,’ Anna whispered. ‘And they heard me refusing.’

‘So they headed for the hills?’

‘Sam has a temper,’ Anna said, and Jim nodded at that.

‘Plus he’s as stubborn as a mule,’ he told her. ‘Just like his mother.’ Then he flicked a glance at Em’s white face, and he nodded again. ‘And their uncle,’ he added almost to himself. ‘You and Jonas both, Anna Lunn. Of all the damned fool families for me and Em to fall in love with…’

He didn’t finish. They were at the edge of the cleared land, and they could go no further in the truck. They piled out-Anna, Jim and Em, and the six members of the fire crew from the back of the truck-and Anna led the way into the bush.

Anna shouldn’t be doing this, Em thought worriedly as the men hacked through the scrub where she indicated. She was only a few weeks post-op, and if she fell on that arm, she could do herself real damage.

‘Hold Jim’s hand, Anna,’ she told her. ‘With your good arm. Jim, hold onto her and don’t let her fall.’

‘I can manage.’

‘For heaven’s sake, we have one casualty, and I don’t want two,’ Em snapped. ‘Stop being so darned independent and do what you’re told.’

Anna cast her a scared look, Jim gave Em a thumbs-up signal and Anna’s hand was taken, whether she liked it or not.

And then they reached Matt.

The little boy was sitting completely by himself on a fallen log. He was one distraught six-year-old, and Em had never seen a child more frightened in her life. There were tears streaming down his face, and he looked as if he’d been crying for ever.

It was all Em could do not to rush forward and gather him into her arms, but Anna was there before her. Despite her still painful arm, she did just that.

‘It’s OK, sweetheart. We’ve got help.’ Somehow Anna managed to sound coherent. ‘Look, Dr Mainwaring’s here…and Jim…and all these men. They’ll get Sam out.’

But for Matt, it wasn’t enough. He’d obviously been speaking to his big brother down the shaft, and he had someone else in mind. ‘Sam says we need Uncle Jonas,’ he quavered. ‘Where’s Uncle Jonas?’

‘He’s right here.’

The voice came out of the bush, and Jonas emerged into the clearing like he’d been conjured.

He must have been right behind them, following the noise they were making as they bush-bashed toward the mine, and how he’d got there so fast, Em didn’t know. From where he’d been doing his house call he must have moved like greased lightning. He didn’t hold back as Em did, but strode forward and took Anna and Matt into his arms.

And he hugged them both.

Hard.

Then they all stared at the tiny slit in the ground that marked the entrance to the shaft.

Em’s heart sank when she saw what was facing them.

The timber covering the shaft was strewn with leaves and rotten twigs. She could see why neither boy had realised it was a shaft. It was horribly camouflaged. One of the rotten planks under the leaf litter had split, a hole about eighteen inches wide and about two feet long had appeared and Sam had slipped through.

He must have grabbed at the surrounding timber as he’d fallen, because already there were twigs covering the hole. If Matt hadn’t been here to see… To guide them back…

It was a miracle that he had. They never would have found this without him.

‘Sam?’ Jonas released Anna and walked to within four feet of the hole. Here the earth was mounded, tossed out by the miners a hundred years ago so he knew it was solid, but to go any closer would be suicidal.

‘Uncle… Uncle Jonas…’ It was a sob of pain from way below ground, and Em closed her eyes at the sound. Not only did Sam sound like he was hurt, he also sounded like he was a long, long way down.

Thirty feet, Anna had estimated, and she couldn’t be far wrong. Sam’s quavery voice echoed into a whisper, sounding over and over through the bush. It was as if he was almost gone from them and only his ghost was lingering.

That was stupid thinking, Em told herself sharply. Get a grip on yourself. The last thing anyone needed here was a hysterical doctor! Or a hysterical anybody. She looked around her, and every single face reflected her terror.

But Jonas had himself under control-sort of-and was answering his nephew.

‘We’re all here, Sam,’ Jonas said strongly back down to him. ‘Your mum, Dr Mainwaring, Jim and the men from the fire brigade are all here. And Matt’s here, too. He led us to you like a real hero. OK, Sam.’ He forced his voice to be matter-of-fact. ‘Let’s get some action. Can you tell me what you’re standing on?’

And the echoing whisper came up. ‘I’m not…I’m not standing on anything.’

Not standing on anything… That was the worst possible answer. Em’s stomach clenched at the thought of what it meant.

‘So what’s holding you up?’ Jonas said, and Em could detect a faint tremor behind the strength of his words.

Then she glanced back at movement behind her and discovered that the men from the fire brigade were unloading planks from the truck and carrying them toward the shaft. Jim wasn’t wasting time.

‘My shoulders are stuck,’ Sam whimpered. He caught his breath and started again. Every word was obviously a huge effort. ‘I fell and fell and then my shoulders wedged against the sides. My feet are waving in air. Uncle Jonas, my arm’s really, really hurting but I’m scared to wiggle in case I fall even further.’

‘Good boy. Not moving is a really sensible decision.’ Somehow Jonas had forced his voice back to normal. ‘Are your arms above your head or below?’ He said it as if it didn’t matter, but everyone knew that it did. Desperately. If his hands were free, maybe someone could be lowered to grasp him and he could be lifted.

But his answer was the wrong one. ‘Below. Sort of.’ He gave another whimper of pain. ‘They’re by my sides. One hand’s stuck by my tummy, and the other’s sort of wedged between my shoulder and the edge. But I can’t move anything ’cos there’s nothing underneath me. I’m just stuck. Uncle Jonas, I’m scared.’

‘As long as you don’t move you’ve no reason to be scared,’ Jonas told him, lying without blinking and moving aside for the firemen to lay their planks across from the mound he was standing on to the mound on the other side of the hole. ‘Just stay absolutely still, and we’ll see what the best way is to get you out of there.’

There wasn’t a best way.

Once the men had planks across the entrance, it was Jim who lay on his belly and inched his way across to the crevice. Then he shone his torch downward.

And he said a word that was too low for Sam to hear, but was loud enough for everyone waiting to realise there were huge problems ahead of them.

‘There’s been land movement here since the shaft was dug,’ Jim said briefly as he carefully worked his way back. ‘The shaft sides go in and out. The shaft starts off about four foot wide-wide enough for a man to enter with ease. Then about fifteen feet down it narrows to about eighteen inches, before widening again. Sam’s dropped further than that.’

‘Why?’ Jonas was bewildered. ‘That doesn’t make sense.’

‘There was a land tremor here about ten years back,’ Jim said briefly. ‘A lot of these mines caved in then, but it’s my guess this one’s just contorted. We’ll need to set up mirrors to check for sure, but the shaft seems to narrow again where Sam’s stuck. All I can see is Sam’s head, and I can tell it’s that because I know what I’m looking for. He’s so far down… He’s stuck firmly by the shoulders-he hasn’t even got enough free movement to look up and see the beam of my torch.’

There was silence while this was absorbed. Then Anna gave a racking sob, and Jonas’s arm came round her, holding her up. Willing her strength to face what had to be faced.

‘We’ll get him out, Anna,’ he said confidently, then added to Jim, ‘Can you get me down there?’

‘No way, mate,’ Jim told him. ‘As I said, the first narrowing’s at about fifteen feet. It’s too narrow for you to slide through, and if you dislodge any rocks trying then you’ll crush Sam.’

‘What’ll we do?’ Anna whispered brokenly. ‘Jim… Jonas… Dear God…’

There was no easy answer.

‘I want floodlights and mirrors,’ Jim said decisively. The fire chief might be emotionally involved but he was still very much in charge. ‘We have rods with sights so we can check everything without going down ourselves. The mirrors are designed for looking around corners where we can’t. No one goes near that hole until we’ve had a thorough look at what we’re facing.’ He took a deep breath. ‘Mind you, we still won’t be able to tell what depth of shaft Sam has beneath him. Does anyone know how far these shafts drop?’

‘My grandpa used to work up in the hills around here,’ one of the firemen volunteered. The man was looking as sick as every person there. This was the stuff of nightmares. ‘He says there was an old river bed they tried to reach, where the gold lode ran. He’s told me…’

‘Yes?’

The man’s voice had faltered. Now he lifted his head and met Jim’s eyes. He deliberately didn’t look at Anna. ‘He’s told me the shafts bottomed at about two hundred feet. That means…if the kid’s shoulders slip through from where he’s stuck, he has another a hundred and fifty feet to fall. Or more.’

Jim’s array of mirrors gave them no comfort at all. It was just as he’d guessed by torchlight-the mine was a shaft about four feet wide, narrowing for a few feet where the land tremor had buckled it, broadening for another ten feet or so and narrowing again where Sam was wedged. They could only imagine the drop underneath.

‘There’s only one thing to do,’ Jim said at last, and he bit his lip so hard a fleck of blood appeared on the broken skin.

‘Which is?’ Jonas’s voice was hoarse with fear. ‘Hell, man, we have to do something.’ There was so little they could do when even approaching the shaft meant a fear of rocks falling on the little boy’s head.

‘There’s been cases like this before,’ Jim said. He sounded surer than his white face let on. ‘I’ve read about them. It’ll take a while but it’s proved to be only way. I’ll organise the equipment now.’

‘To do what?’

‘We dig a shaft beside this one,’ he told them. ‘About ten feet away. Far enough not to dislodge anything in Sam’s shaft. We dig down to a few feet below Sam, then we tunnel across, meet his shaft, stick in a false floor and come up underneath him.’

Jonas took a deep breath, while everyone else absorbed this in horror. ‘That’ll take skilled miners. And days.’

‘Not days,’ Jim said. ‘Not with the amount of help I’ll call in. But it may well take until tomorrow. We just have to hope that Sam can keep still for that long.’

‘He can’t.’

Anna had sunk down onto a fallen log, and she was shaking in fear. ‘He’s hurting now. He only has to twist…’

‘He’s a sensible kid.’ Jonas was still holding her, but his face was as white as her own.

‘He’s only eight. And he’s hurt.’

They knew she was right. Everyone there knew she was right. The chances of Sam staying still for the long hours this would take were slim to non-existent.

And then Em took a deep breath. How wide had Jim said the narrow part of the shaft was?

‘Let me see,’ she said. She took Jim’s torch before he could protest and crawled across the planking to see for herself. She was very careful, holding the torch clear from the shaft so she could see without dislodging anything.

And she saw exactly what Jim had described. A narrowing fifteen feet down, not wide enough to let a man through, but wide enough to let Sam slip though into the wider chamber beyond and then into the next narrowing.

Not big enough to let a man through…

‘Jim, how wide is that blockage at fifteen feet?’ she asked in a strained voice. ‘Can we find out exactly?’

‘I guess.’ Jim was watching her from the side of the planking. ‘I have instruments in the truck that can do it.’

‘Then find out for me,’ Em told him. ‘If it’s wider than my shoulders, I’m going down.’

It took a lot of persuading-about half an hour of constant pressure. There wasn’t a man there who wasn’t horrified at the thought of anyone, much less a woman, going down the shaft.

But there was no choice, and all of them knew it.

‘It’ll take hours for you to get the machinery in place, much less start digging,’ Em told them. ‘Sam’s growing quieter by the minute. He’s in shock. He needs a drip to keep his blood pressure up, he needs pain relief and, above all else, he needs someone near him. You tell me there’s a slight ledge beside his head where the wall’s moved…’

‘We don’t know how stable it is.’

‘I won’t put weight on it. I’ll just use it to lever myself into position. If you can harness me, I’ll be held from above and all my weight can stay on the harness. I’ll wear a hard hat and I’ll take another down for Sam.’ She looked around at the group of strained faces. ‘Please,’ she said. ‘It’s the only hope he has of surviving.’

They didn’t like it. They didn’t like it one bit. But they measured the width of the narrow part of the shaft. It’d fit Em’s shoulders with an inch to spare.

And it wouldn’t fit anyone else but a child.

‘There you go, then,’ Em told them. ‘It finally pays to be skinny. So rig me up and get me down there.’

‘Em…’ It was Jonas, and his face was etched harshly with strain. ‘The shaft-it’s moved already with the landslip. God knows how stable it is. Hell, you can’t-’

She couldn’t get emotional. ‘Do you have any other ideas, Dr Lunn?’

‘You realise the whole thing could collapse?’

‘Yeah, that’s just what Anna wants to hear,’ she snapped. ‘And me, too. So forget it. It’s not going to happen. If you lower me down so slowly I’m hardly moving, I’ll keep my hands away from the walls and I’ll put no pressure on anything. I’m not adding to that risk very much at all.’

‘You’re putting two lives in danger instead of one.’

‘Then dig fast,’ she told him calmly, much more calmly than, in fact, she was feeling. ‘And rescue both of us.’

‘Oh, Em.’ Anna was clutching Matt for mutual comfort, but she put her little boy down and came forward to give her doctor a hug. ‘If you’d really do this for us…’

Em hugged her back. And then she stepped away, and looked to Jim. She needed to move fast here before she lost her courage.

She really wasn’t that brave!

‘I need equipment,’ she told the men. ‘Can you organise a line so we can hoist things up and down to me? Medical equipment. Food and water if I want it. Whatever I need.’

‘We can do that.’ It was Jonas, and she had the overriding impression that he was close to tears. ‘Em, you realise it could be tomorrow before we get Sam out. You’ll be down there until then. We daren’t risk pulling you up and down again.’

‘Once I’m down, I’m down to stay,’ she agreed, ‘so let’s get this right first off.’

‘Em…’

‘What?’

Nothing. He stared at her for a long, long minute, while all the impossibilities crowded in on him.

But there was no choice and he knew it. Without Em, they’d surely lose Sam.

But maybe they’d lose both of them.

He couldn’t bear it, and his face showed that to her, too. If he could have cut off his shoulders to do this himself, he would have, she realised, and the thought inexplicably warmed her.

But she was the only one who would fit, and he was forced to let her go.

‘Em,’ he said again, and there was a whole depth of meaning-of longing, of fear and of love-behind his words. ‘Love…’

And he took the two steps toward her. There was no choice about what he did then either.

He took her into his arms and he kissed her.

And then, after a contact so precious neither of them could realise just what it meant, he put her away from him, like a man preparing himself for a nightmare worse than anyone could imagine.

‘Stay safe,’ he whispered, and Em knew right then and there that his words were a plea for himself-not for her.

What followed was a nightmare.

Em’s descent was prepared with as much care as the men could possibly muster. They planked the entire top of the shaft, fitting a net to catch any rubble before it fell. Then they widened the entrance so it was large enough to fit Em, and also so it was dead centre of the narrow gap fifteen feet down.

‘Because you have to drop straight down,’ she was told. ‘You mustn’t sway. We can rig the harness so you drop vertically and then we can pull the harness up so you’re in a sitting position once you’re there, but you have to slip through that gap without touching the sides. If you can’t do that, you risk dislodging…’

There was no need to tell her more. She knew what she risked.

So finally, hard-hatted and overalled, placed in a harness that spread her weight through her entire body and wearing a carefully packed medical pouch around her midriff, she was gently lowered through the hole.

The last thing she remembered seeing as she looked up at the people surrounding her was Jonas.

And his face was desperate.

‘Sam…’

The little boy was barely conscious. Em had been whispering to him as she descended, focusing on not touching the walls but also intent on not frightening the child into jerking when he realised she was there. He hadn’t responded. Now, though, she was within inches of him.

There was a ledge-about ten inches wide or so-on either side of his head. Em shone her torch down to see how Sam was held, and her heart sank.

How had he not slipped through? He was so far through now. One more slip…

There was his head, his hair still bright red and curly, but that was about all that was recognisably Sam. He’d scratched himself falling. His face was bloody and tear-stained, and as white as death.

‘Sam.’

His sightless eyes suddenly focused. He couldn’t look up but, seated in her harness above him, Em’s hand was on his head, gently running her fingers through his curls. Her voice was urgent.

‘Sam, even though I’m here now, you’re not to move an inch. In case you fall further. You understand, Sam?’

‘I…’ He gulped. ‘Yes.’ He was brave to the core. ‘I understand.’

‘But at least I’m here. I won’t leave you.’

‘Mum. Uncle Jonas,’ he whispered. ‘I want them.’

‘I want them, too.’ She forced herself to chuckle, and it echoed strangely in the darkness. ‘But they’re both too fat to come down.’

It was a terrifying experience, trying to hold herself still in the harness and talking into the dark. She had a floodlight on her cap, and the beam of light swung wildly as she looked about her. There was another small torch in her hand which she used to carefully examine Sam. ‘You have got yourself into a pickle, haven’t you.’

‘I’m…I’m scared.’

‘You and me both,’ Em said solidly. There was no use pretending. Sam was too intelligent a kid not to pick up on a lie when he heard it. ‘But we’re in this together, so let’s make the best of it.’

The best case scenario-the one they’d hoped against hope for when they’d lowered Em-was that somehow she could rig a harness around Sam so that he could be winched up.

It wasn’t remotely possible.

One arm was out of sight. The other hand had been forced up and was wedged at an odd angle between his shoulder and the wall. Em could see his wrist and hand but that was all. The extra width of his arm was what was wedging him. If he moved that hand…

He couldn’t. She was almost scared to touch him, much less try and gain a hold. She knew disaster would result.

They just had to play a waiting game.

If he started to slip, she told herself, she’d just grab him around the neck and that one hand and pull. She risked breaking his neck by doing so, but if he was going to fall it was the only chance he had.

Please, let him not slip.

‘Is this the arm that hurts?’ she asked, and touched his fingers with a feather touch.

‘Yes. It hurts so much. It just jabs and jabs.’ She didn’t need to examine him to know it was true. She could hear the agony in his voice.

‘I can help that.’ She forced her voice to be as matter-of-fact as possible. ‘Sam, I’m going to pop an injection into your neck. A pinprick-that’s all. It’ll make you feel really sleepy, but that’s OK. You can go to sleep if you want. The men are going to dig down to reach us and it’ll take ages so it’s better if you sleep. And the injection will stop the pain really fast. Do you think you can hold very, very still and not even wiggle when you feel the needle?’

‘I…I’ll try.’

‘Good kid.’

Great kid.

Please, let him not fall…

Em wished she could sleep herself.

Hour upon hour she waited. Sam slept and stirred and she comforted him. Over and over.

Once she knew she could reach his wrist, she called up to Jonas and he sent down what she needed to set up a saline drip. Somehow, and afterwards she could never figure out how, she inserted a needle into one of the little boy’s crushed arms, then hung the saline bag on the pouch at her midriff.

Please, let him not have any internal injuries, she prayed over and over again. His pulse was thready but that might be shock.

She hung on in the dark and there was no answer to her pleas.

If Jonas hadn’t been right there above her, she would have gone quietly crazy.

He talked to her. Over and over. He lay on the planking above her head and he talked her through every stage of what was happening. How they’d decided against drills because of the fear of vibrations in the unstable soil. How they were digging by hand-teams of men-every able-bodied man in the district seemed to be here now, taking turns to dig, to heave soil to the surface, to shore the new shaft, to chop timber for shoring…

It seemed everyone in Bay Beach was here. Lori. Shanni. Erin. Wendy. All her friends. They took it in turns to talk to her-Lori had even brought Bernard, for heaven’s sake, and she described him as frantic. Bernard? Frantic?

‘Well, he’s scratching his butt,’ Lori told her. ‘In Bernard-speak, that’s frantic.’

She smiled, but she couldn’t smile for long.

But always there was Jonas, speaking softly over everyone else.

‘Em, here’s Lori to talk to you. With your weird dog. And Nick. Nick’s been digging-you ever seen a magistrate with mud on his face? Em, Ray’s been here, demanding to dig. How many weeks after a bypass? I reckon he’s crazier than you are. I’ve told him he has to wait until you come up because I need another doctor if he’s going into cardiac arrest again…’

And sometimes there was just Jonas.

‘Em, I’m still here. We’re all still here. We won’t leave you.’

And then an even shorter message as the night grew longer and the darkness deepened. Over and over.

‘I won’t leave you.’

And then… ‘Em, I’ll never leave you.’

The discomfort was unbelievable. Em hung in her harness and kept her increasingly desperate vigil. Her hand ran through the little boy’s hair over and over again, the only contact with him that she dared.

It had been almost impossible to put in the saline drip. He’d jerked once and it had scared the life out of her. So now she monitored the drip, gave him pain relief as he needed it and kept in contact with him by touching his curls.

She was starting to need the contact with Sam as much as he needed it from her.

The walls were closing in on her.

As night fell, the light from the top of the shaft dimmed and died. The shaft seemed to close in still further.

‘Jonas,’ she whispered, and he was there. Of course he was there. He’d promised.

‘We’re down fifteen feet,’ he told her. ‘We’re moving faster than I thought possible. We’ll have you out by dawn, Em.’

She took a deep breath. ‘I need some light.’

‘You have your flashlight. Are the batteries dying?’

‘No… I mean up there. So I can see…you.’

Her voice trailed off but he had it in one. Claustrophobia was impossible to predict, and when it happened it was almost impossible to control.

‘Do you need to come up?’ His voice was harsh with anxiety.

‘No!’ No way. She couldn’t leave Sam. Firstly, to drag her up past that narrow passage would risk debris falling down on him, and to come down again would be impossible.

Her claustrophobia was something she had to control all by herself-and she had to control it.

‘I just need to see…the top,’ she said.

‘You will.’ And then Jonas’s voice rang out, curt with command, and there were suddenly floodlights playing over the top of the shaft. She could look up and see his face-his smile. He was shining the torch over his face so that he was no longer in the shadows, and she could see him clearly, even though he was so far away.

‘It won’t be long, Em,’ he told her, his voice willing it to be the truth. ‘We’re boarding up the new shaft as we go, and that’s what’s taking the time. We can’t move too fast or we risk a tragedy, but we’re going as fast as humanly possible.’

Twenty feet…

She could hear them-muffled shouts, swearing, snapping commands from the top.

Twenty-five feet, Jonas told her.

Thirty feet.

And then, finally, she heard faint, muffled and far-away noises through the dirt and rock by her side, and she knew they’d reached her level.

Still they didn’t come near. They were digging a good ten feet away from the side of her shaft. They would go deeper and then across.

‘It’ll take two more hours,’ Jonas said, and his voice was filled with confidence. It demanded confidence in return. ‘Can you hold on that long, Em?’

What could she give him but confidence in return?

‘Of course I can.’

At last, blessedly, there was the sound of scraping, and falling dirt, and a chink of light played up from under Sam’s chin. Someone was under him.

Em had gone past discomfort. Every muscle in her body had reacted at some time and now she was cramping and tired and desperate to go to the bathroom-but Sam was shifting and he mustn’t move yet.

‘No,’ she said sharply, and her hand held his hair, and stroked down to his chin. ‘The men have reached under us but they don’t have the planking in place yet to stop you falling. It’s still not safe for us to move, Sam, love. Can you hold on for a little more?’

He was drifting in and out of consciousness, but Em didn’t know how much of that was due to shock, how much to internal injuries and how much to the pain relief she’d given him. It’d have to be a combination. But what sort of combination?

Hurry…

‘They’re coming,’ she told the little boy. ‘They’re very near. You’ll soon be with your mum.’

As for Em, she knew what she was aching for.

She’d soon be with Jonas.

‘Got him.’

It was a shout of triumph and it came directly from underneath Sam. To Em’s astonished delight, Sam’s body was raised-not much, but a fraction as his weight was taken into someone’s arms from underneath, just enough for the man on the platform under him to chip away at the rocks wedging him fast.

Finally, Sam’s shoulders released their grip on the rock, but instead of plunging a hundred and fifty feet he was lifted gently into the waiting arms of the man who’d released him.

As the shaft was unblocked below her harness, Em was left staring down in incredulity at the laughing, blackened face of an unknown man, jubilant with triumph.

‘Is it OK if we take your patient, Doc?’ he asked. He hugged Sam to him, careful not to hold him any tighter than he needed, and reached up to take the saline bag from Em. He looped the IV line carefully so the whole arrangement was resting on Sam’s middle.

And that was it. ‘Come on, young man. We’ve made this shaft wide enough to get you out.’

With that, Sam was tenderly manoeuvred out through the side shaft, out of Em’s sight, and there was nothing left but for Em to be raised to the surface.

To Jonas.

Jonas suffered the diggers to help haul her to the surface, but that was all they were allowed to do. As she emerged into the breaking dawn light, it was Jonas who stepped forward and gathered her into his arms.

And he held her as if he’d never let her go again.

Ever.