Page 83 of In Too Deep
“Then it won’t take long to check.”
Meg moved closer, her headlamp illuminating the torn fabric of his pants at the knee.The denim was shredded and dark with dirt and what might be blood.“Can you roll this up?”
He did and revealed a nasty gash along his shin.The flesh around it was swollen—angry, red and inflamed.And she could see the beginning of bruising spreading up toward his knee—deep purple-black marks that spoke of significant trauma.
Not deep enough to need stitches, maybe.But ugly.Painful.
“Noah.”Her fingers hovered over the wound.“This needs to be cleaned.It could get infected.”
“We don’t exactly have running water down here.”
“We have the water bottles.And I have antiseptic wipes in my pack.”She was already reaching for her bag.“This is going to sting.”
“I’ve had worse.”
Probably true.This was Noah, who’d climbed mountains and rappelled into canyons and had almost certainly done a thousand dangerous things she didn’t even know about.
As she worked—carefully cleaning around the wound and dabbing away dried blood and grit—Noah didn’t even wince or flinch.His dark eyes just watched her, steady and unblinking.
“How bad was it?”she asked quietly as she dabbed antiseptic along the gash.The chemical smell cut through the cave’s dampness.“In the shaft?”
Noah was quiet for a moment.She could feel him deciding how much to tell her, how much to hide.When he spoke, his voice was low and almost reluctant.
“Bad enough.My leg got wedged between rocks.Couldn’t move up or down for a while there.”
“You could have broken it.”Her hands stilled.She imagined him trapped, alone in the dark, wedged between rocks with no way out and no one to help him.Her chest tightened.
“But I didn’t.”His voice was steady, but she could hear the edge underneath—the fear he’d pushed down.“I twisted, changed the angle, and it came free.Burned like fire, but nothing’s broken.”
Meg smoothed a bandage over the worst of the wound, her fingers gentle against his skin.She could feel the heat of inflammation under the surface, the slight give that suggested deep bruising.Muscle trauma.Maybe ligament damage.
“You need to keep weight off this as much as possible.”
“Not really an option right now.”
“I’m serious, Noah.If there’s ligament damage?—”
“Meg.”He caught her hand and stilled her movements.His palm was warm and calloused from rope work and climbing.“I’ll be okay.We’ll be okay.”
She looked up at him.In the glow of their headlamps, she could see the exhaustion etched into his face—the lines around his eyes deeper than usual, the tightness in his jaw, the pain he was trying to hide.His hair, now short on the sides, made his features sharper somehow.
But there was something else there too—something fierce and determined, like he’d made a decision during those minutes alone in the dark and wasn’t backing down.
“You found a way out,” she said softly.“The shaft.You think someone will see the flair?”
He paused, his thumb brushing across her knuckles.“I hope so.”
Hope.
The word hung between them, heavy with everything it didn’t promise.
“There was a moment,” Noah continued, his voice dropping to barely above a whisper, “when my headlamp died.I was stuck in that shaft, in complete darkness, and for a second, I was ten years old again, lost in a dark cave, unable to protect…” He stopped and swallowed.“It was the most helpless I’ve felt since the day Mary died.”
Meg’s hand rested on his upper arm.She felt the tension ripple through his muscles.
“Then my grandfather’s verse—the one he always quoted—filled my mind.‘The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.’I realized I’ve been so focused on my pain since Mary and Penelope’s deaths that I forgot to look for the light.Or maybe just refused to see it.But He’s been there the whole time.Not only that, but He’s brought so many people to love and support me even when I refused to acknowledge He was there.”
People like you.He didn’t say it, but she heard it anyway.
