Chapter 1 #2
“No breath sounds on the left. Pneumothorax.” She glanced at him with her voice low. “We need to decompress her chest or she’ll die before we get her out.”
Noah’s heart thudded. “What do you need to do?”
“We need to put a hole in her chest between two ribs.” She blew out a breath, and her eyes flicked to his—wide and glassy.
“Meg?” Something didn’t feel right.
“You’re going to cut her open in the cave?” Jeremy said.
Noah just about grabbed the kid up and dragged him away.
But the last thing they needed was more drama.
Especially since something still didn’t feel right with Meg.
Her hand trembled again ever so slightly as she reached for supplies.
But Noah caught it—he’d learned to read her tells. She was on the edge of freezing up.
Just like when she’d had a panic attack when Nimue was hurt. But he’d talked her through that.
He could talk her through this too.
He met her gaze. “Trust me. You’ve got this.”
“Why are you guys taking so long?” Jeremy paced around them. “Can she help her or not?”
“Just let them do their job,” one of the other girls snapped.
“I’m not convinced they even know how to do their job,” Jeremy shot back.
One of the girls began crying—high, keening sounds. The whole group started talking, their voices echoing and layering over each other.
Meg’s breathing sped up. Her hands fumbled with the IV, her fingers clumsy.
“What is wrong with your doctor?” Jeremy’s biting words nearly made Noah come undone.
“Liam, get him out of here. Now,” Noah snapped. “All four out before another aftershock hits.”
He turned back to Meg and moved to kneel directly in front of her. “Breathe. You’re a good doctor. Lydia needs you. You’ve done this before. You can do it again.”
“I can’t—” Her voice was barely a whisper.
“You can.” He placed his hands on either side of her face. His forehead rested against hers. He tuned out Liam’s commanding voice. The world narrowed to the two of them.
“Let my voice anchor you. I’m not going anywhere. You’ve. Got. This.”
He felt her shudder as her breath caught. Then slowly—slowly—her breathing steadied and matched his.
She nodded just once and reached for the needle with hands that had stopped shaking.
Noah held Lydia steady, his own hands shaking now.
The hiss of air the moment Meg inserted the needle was the sweetest sound he’d ever heard. Just like that, Lydia’s chest began to rise and fall more evenly. Color crept back into her lips.
Meg didn’t move—still frozen in that moment.
Noah squeezed her hand. “I am so proud of you. I—”
A deep rumble rolled through the passage and vibrated the stone beneath his knees. A cloud of dust burst from the narrow opening and swallowed the last shaft of natural light. The air clogged.
“Noah.” Teague’s frantic voice crackled through the radio.
Noah snatched it up. “We’re fine. Are you guys okay?”
“We made it clear.” The faint arguing of Liam and Jeremy echoed behind Teague’s words. “But the way out is blocked.”
“How blocked?”
Long pause. Too long.
“It could take some time.”
Noah stared at the collapsed passage—at the wall of rock where minutes ago there’d been an opening. His headlamp illuminated only rubble and dust.
Meg’s glance at him said it all. Meg’s procedure was a Band-Aid. Lydia needed emergency help. A hospital. Surgery.
Time was what they didn’t have.
He looked at Meg, met her eyes, and saw his own worry reflected back.
Meg Lewis refused to let the fear suck her under.
Her heart hammered against her ribs, with each beat a frantic echo in the clammy air.
She crouched beside Lydia, her knees aching against the uneven stone floor and the girl’s shallow breaths a fragile rhythm.
The metallic tang of blood clung to the dust. Her headlamp flickered with the battery dying.
She squeezed her eyes shut. She’d nearly lost it and let Lydia die because her mind had spiraled into that familiar storm.
Doubt. Guilt. The weight of every life she couldn’t save.
Her brother in the water, thrashing. Her father at their vacation cabin, cold and still. Nimue’s face, pale and clammy.
But with Nimue, Noah had been there. His hands steady, his voice cutting through the chaos. Breathe. You’re a good doctor. You’ve got this.
Now, his presence beside her—broad shoulders hunched in the tight space, his headlamp a steady beam—was a lifeline. She clung to it. To him.
Every so often, a pebble skittered down the wall and she flinched.
“Noah.” The whisper barely escaped her dry lips. “I don’t know if I can do this.”
He turned with dust settled in the creases around his eyes—those deep brown eyes that had become her anchor. “You already did, Meg. You saved her. You are doing it.”
His voice was calm, that deep rumble that always steadied her. But she heard the strain underneath—the weight of the collapsed passage trapping them inside.
They were stuck. All of them—her, Noah, Lydia.
She checked Lydia’s IV with trembling fingers. Lydia’s chest rose and fell unevenly, her lips still faintly blue despite everything. But the decompression had bought them time.
Not much. But some.
Jeremy’s earlier accusations still echoed in her mind. What is wrong with your doctor?
Maybe she’d been a fool to come. Maybe she’d been a fool to take this job, period.
She wanted to scream, to claw her way out through the solid rock. But Noah’s steady breathing kept her grounded.
Breathe in…two, three, four. Hold…two, three, four. Breathe out…two, three, four. Hold…two, three, four.
Again.
Finally, her mind began to clear. She just needed to get out of her head. “I’d planned on doing research after med school.”
“But you are so good with patients.” He shifted positions, then unhooked the water bottle from his belt and passed it to her.
“Anxiety and doctors aren’t a good mix.” She unscrewed the top and took a long swig, then passed it back.
“And I am good in the lab, so I was approached in my residency to join a research project. New ways to treat autoimmune disorders—rheumatoid arthritis, lupus. Everything was set, then funding dried up.”
His face was barely visible in the light from the small LED lantern he’d set between them. But his eyes were locked on her.
“That must have been disappointing.”
“Understatement of the century.” She tried for a smile and failed.
“But then I got a job at the ER in Denver for a while. That wasn’t a good fit.
Then I was offered a job at the South Rim—‘Work for the government for four years and we’ll pay off your loans’ deal.
After two years, they moved me here to establish the clinic at the North Rim. ”
That meant her four years were up at the start of August.
When she’d taken the job, she’d been counting down the years. Not so much lately.
Her gaze flicked to Noah again and took in the way dust had settled in his blond hair.
“When the door opened to do this, I thought it was God’s way of showing me He had other plans for me besides research.”
“I think He does.”
“Joke’s on Him. I’m terrible at it.” Meg’s fingers brushed the girl’s wrist and found the weak pulse. “I also thought He’d heal me of this anxiety. But…” Her voice sounded thin and echoed off the limestone. Her breathing began to pick up speed again.
Noah shifted closer. His knee brushed hers.
Even the smallest touch kept her here. Now.
No one else had ever pulled her back from the edge like this man.
“When I was a kid, maybe ten”—Noah’s voice dropped low as he reached for her hand—“I got it in my head to explore this little cave near my grandpa’s cabin. I’d just watched Indiana Jones and was convinced there was treasure inside.” His story wound through the darkness.
“Did you have a hat?” She ran her thumb over his knuckles.
He seemed to stop breathing for a second.
“I bet you were cute.”
He cleared his throat but didn’t pull his hand away. “I did have a hat. And a whip—well, a rope—” A low chuckle rumbled through his chest. “I’ll show you a photo sometime and you can decide if I was cute.”
“Please tell me this doesn’t end with you getting lost in the cave alone.” Her hand tightened around his.
“Don’t jump ahead.” He laced her fingers with his, then began toying with her fingers with his free hand. “And I wasn’t alone. I knew better than to go into a cave alone, so I let my brother Ezra come. He was five.”
“No!”
“Yup. I let him carry the flashlight—one of those cheap ones that flickered every time you shook it. We crawled in there, and after about ten feet, it opened up into a large cavern. Not too different from this one but with stalagmites and stalactites. I’d never seen anything like it and I wanted to see more, so we followed one of the paths deeper into the cave. And as you guessed it—”
“You got lost.” Her hand gripped his tighter.