“I guess we haven’t spent a lot of time this close in good lighting before, have we?”
“Probably not,” he agreed, his neck sore from keeping his head turned, so he faced her square on. “Anyway, there’s not much room up front and my manners seem to have gone. Let me jump in the back and you ride up front with Henry.”
She stepped back and Lucas jumped down. Her arm brushed his as she pulled herself into the seat he vacated. Giving her a long look, one that even in his sleep-deprived state he knew was much too long, he went to the back of the jeep.
“Ready, doc?” Henry called.
“Yep, away you go,” Lucas responded, hating himself for the fact he’d positioned himself on the side of the jeep that meant if Frankie turned around to talk she’d be treated to the ‘good’ side of his face.
The drive to the rescue site was blessedly quick, but the bumps and potholes in the road threw Lucas all over the back of the vehicle. Someone needed to tell Henry the roads were no longer suitable for rushing along at breakneck speed.
Henry stopped the jeep, kicking up a cloud of dust. “Neighbours say they’ve heard singing coming from this house.”
It wasn’t a house. At least, not any more it wasn’t. Lucas surveyed the pile of rubble behind a neatly trimmed front lawn. He couldn’t believe anyone had survived the house falling down.
He grabbed his medical kit and jumped out. Lucas opened Frankie’s door and helped her down. His palm tingled where they’d touched, but the adrenaline now pumping through his veins wasn’t, for once, anything to do with her; he was ready for the rescue, for whatever he needed to do to get the family under what remained of their house to safety.
A group of people stood gathered off to one side, some weeping, the young men bouncing on the balls of their feet with excess energy.
“I don’t suppose we have any lifting equipment available?” he asked.
A couple of the men shrugged, but no one gave him an answer. This was the thing that frustrated him most about disaster-torn areas. Aid charities were quick to fly in enormous boxes of food, but the things they needed on the ground were manpower and equipment to release trapped people. Otherwise, the food wouldn’t ever be needed.
His long-held desire to found his own charity—one that would mobilise medics, lifting equipment, and food to disaster areas—wound its way around his heart. One day, he’d do it. He had no idea when that day would be, but he wouldn’t rest until he’d achieved it. Maybe then he would feel at peace. Maybe then the gnawing guilt he felt any time he thought of his brother, and the way he died, would stop.
“Okay, we’ll do it ourselves. You guys all able to help?”
“Thought we’d never be asked.” One of them remarked, while another said he would go to a nearby shelter, which had been opened to help those who’d found themselves homeless, to round up more volunteers.
It was hard, laborious work as, little by little, they lifted parts of the tin roof, timber, and bricks to one side.
“Stop!” Frankie called.
The men paused at her shout. “What is it?”
“I can hear something.” Her voice trembled as she pushed loose tendrils of blonde hair away from her face. “Hello?”
Faintly, Lucas heard a woman return Frankie’s shout.
“She’s over here!”
Attention shifted to the spot where Frankie stood.
“Well done.” Lucas patted Frankie on the back, much like he would any other colleague. Then, to the others, “Slow and steady, guys, we don’t want to cause anything to fall into the victim.”
#
Frankie lay flat on her stomach across the rubble, reaching her hand through a small pocket of space they had cleared. She shined the torch around the darkness beneath. “Hello down there. My name is Frankie, we’re here to get you out. Can you tell me your name?”
“I’m Claudia, and my sister Naomi is down here with me.” The other woman’s voice sounded thready but with an underlying tone of wonder that brought tears to Frankie’s eyes. The other woman had probably given up hoping someone would find them.
“I hear you’ve been singing.” Frankie swept the torch around again in an effort to locate Claudia. “It helped us know you were down here. Maybe you could keep doing that?”
“You don’t want to hear me sing.”
“Believe me, we do,” Frankie assured her. “If we can hear you sing, we know you’re there and it helps us locate you. Can you see the beam of the torch? Because I can’t see you.”
“I hid under a table when the earthquake hit. If you can see that, I’m under there.”
“Great, okay, how are you doing down there? Are you injured?”
“My ankle is bad, but I think that’s it.”
“You’re doing so well,” Frankie soothed. She didn’t want to ask the next question, but she knew she had to. “And how about Naomi? Has she been singing with you?”