Written in the Scars(72)

The chest starts to move more quickly, and the man begins to cough and wheeze. Whoever he is, he’s alive.

His eyes open and when they lock on me, a weak version of my favorite smile in the word flashes at me.





ELIN


Lindsay grabs my arm as we sit on a ’70’s-patterned sofa. Her nails dig into my skin and it hurts, but I kind of like it. It keeps me present. Takes away from the numbness beginning to hit my nerves.

“Ladies,” Vernon says, “this is Greta VanBraun with Blackwater and Reed Fascinelli with the Mining Safety Board. I regret to inform you that there’s been an accident underground today.”

“No,” Lindsay sobs, her eyes wide with panic. I reach for her, pulling her to me, tears streaming down my face.

“Who’s hurt?” I ask, my throat burning from the emotion.

A hint of a look of surprise glints across Vernon’s face. It’s just enough that it hits me straight in the gut, and I know there’s more to it than that.

My arm sags off Lindsay’s shoulder as I stand, even though my legs shake under me. “Someone is just hurt, right?”

“Mrs. Whitt, will you please sit down?”

The look on Greta’s face chills me to the bone. I fall into my seat. “Where’s Ty?” I ask, my voice so clear it even surprises me. “Where’s my husband?”

“Mrs. Whitt, please—”

I cut Greta off. “Please spare me all the pretty language and answer my question. Where are my husband and brother? Where is Cord McCurry? If they’re at a hospital, we need to get to them.”

They don’t speak, but they don’t need to. The look on their faces says it all.

The volume of my wail screams through the room. Lindsay pulls me into her, her tears hot against my cheek. My ears are assaulted by her sobs aimed straight against my eardrums. But none of it matters.

Not anymore.





TY


“Can you move?” I ask Jiggs.

He groans and begins, with precision, to move his limbs. “Yeah,” he coughs. “I think so.”

Cord and I help him to his feet. He staggers a bit until he gets oriented.

“What the f*ck happened?” Jiggs asks, taking off his helmet and feeling his head, wincing.

“Pettis was mining over there. I remember telling him to stop and he looked over his shoulder and everything started moving,” I reflect. “That’s all I remember.”

“Who else is down here? Who else . . . you know, made it?” Jiggs says the words with a break to his voice, like the situation, the reality, is starting to smack him in the coal-black face.

“Us.” The words ring around the space, sending a chill through all of us.

I put it out there plain as day because it’s the truth and the sooner we accept it, the better. It’s the first thing we learn in training. To stay cognizant of your situation.

This is our situation.

“Fuck,” he hisses, looking around the darkened cavern. “How in the f*ck are we getting out of here?”

I glance at Cord, who’s looking at me. He knows what I know—that there’s a blind man’s shot in the dark that we’ll ever get out of here. The odds aren’t good. They’re shit, actually. They’ll try, I know they will, but I also know the numbers and factors and that we are f*cked.

Before Jiggs can see my face, I turn away from him. Tears dot my eyes, the saltiness burning my cheeks in what must be cuts and scratches.

I haven’t even checked to see if I’m bleeding. What does it really matter now, anyway?

Squeezing my eyes closed in an attempt to stop the tears, I see Elin. She’s lying in our bed, her shy smile printed on her pretty lips. My hands clench at my sides, my tears just running harder now, because I would give anything to climb in that bed with her, soot and all, and hold her until I stop breathing.

“I’m sorry,” I tell her in my brain, wiping my eyes with the back of my dirty hands. I can taste the acridness of the coal, feel the acid on my skin. Feel the sting in my eyes from the putrid dust.

Clearing my throat and spitting out a mixture of saliva and soot, the bitterness burning my mouth, I turn to my friends. They’re looking at me.

Down here, I’m the man in charge. I have the training, the hours upon hours of sitting in a classroom and being lectured on this very thing. I know what to do, but looking around, feeling the realness of the moment, I know one thing: all that training is bullshit.

My lungs tighten in my chest as panic begins to take root.

“How we getting out of here, Ty?” Jiggs asks again. “What’s the plan?”

I look at his face, barely a speck of skin showing through the blackness smearing his features. His eyes are wide, pleading with me for an answer.

Jiggs swallows, moving his weight from one side to the other, and I know he’s about to lose it. That’s going to use up what oxygen we have down here and make this worse for all of us.

“I’d say we’re sealed. We aren’t getting out up the ramp.” I nod behind Jiggs to the wall of rubble that used to be our road out. Racking my brain for protocol, I put together a plan. “They’ll drill an air shaft as soon as they think the ground is stable.”

“How much oxygen do we have?” Cord asks.