It’s rained the entire day. The injured are still being carried in, but more lives were lost today. Some of them have been buried in the rubble for almost 48 hours now.

“Dr. Manning, are you in the middle of a surgery?” I hear Ander’s voice through my Bluetooth.

“Just finished the last one. What do you have?”

“There is a woman trapped in a water pipe. She went in to rescue her dog and an aftershock from the earthquake caused an old wooden bridge to collapse on it. One of our rescue teams is trying to get her out, but she’s pretty badly hurt and they’re afraid to move her. The river water is rising making it harder to get her out.”

“Alright, log her location into my GPS.” I grab my medical bag, heading for the tent exit.

“Hey, you need a hand?” Wren asks, following behind me.

“Yeah, grab your bag and follow me. Tell Aedon we’re going on a rescue.”

As we load into the military jeep, Aedon runs up to the window. “If you’ll give me a minute to clean up, I’ll come too. We’ve slowed down enough the other physicians can handle the load.”

“I think you should stay here. From what I understand, where this lady is stuck is in raging waters. I don’t think we all need to be in danger.”

She crosses her arms over her chest. “I want to help, too.” She has a determined look in her eye.

“Suit yourself. You have two minutes to be loaded up.”

“Why did you tell her she could come? It’s going to be dangerous.” Wren barks.

“Do you think for one minute you or I would be able to stop her? You know how she gets when she sets her mind to something.”

In less than a minute, she’s climbing in between us in the back seat. “Let’s go,” she says, slapping us both on the knees.

The rain has finally stopped but the winds are roaring at 40mph according to Ander, who’s been talking nonstop in my Bluetooth. He’s been giving me an update on how the mission is going for all of our teams. “The number of people that have been saved is phenomenal. I wish I was in the field with you guys making a difference.”

I cover my ear to talk, to keep the wind from blowing loudly. “You make a difference where you are. You’re our eyes and ears. For everyone we’ve rescued, you’ve been a part of it. We couldn’t do this without you.”

“Thanks, Dr. Manning.”

“How much further do we have?”

“Another mile by Jeep, and then you will have to walk the rest of the way. Be careful, the water is rising quickly with all the rain.”

“Will do.” I disconnect. “We need to be extra cautious out there.” I bend down and lace my boot a little tighter for extra support on my swollen ankle.

“How is your ankle?” Aedon asks.

“It will be a lot better when I can get off it, but I don’t think that will be today.”

“This is as far as we can go,” the driver yells back at us. “We’ll have to go the rest of the way on foot.”

I upload the GPS map to my phone while the others jump out of the vehicle and grab our bags. The soldier equips himself with a coil or rope. “That way.” I point due west. For every ten feet of ground we gain, the wind pushes us back several feet. The collapsed bridge and swelling river come into view as we scramble over a pile of concrete and wood. Several of our team members and military personnel are along the bank. We make our way down to the water.

“Where is she?” I ask one of them.

“Down there.” He points down into the water where a makeshift pump with black corrugated pipe draws the water out onto the bank. “She’s not going to last much longer down there, were not making much headway on keeping the water from rising in the pipe.”

A wet dog rubs up against Aedon’s leg. “Are you who she was saving?” She bends down and pats his head. “You’re so cute.”

“Cute or not, she should’ve never gone in after him,” I say.

“Don’t you listen to him. I would’ve gone in to save you too,” she tells him in a high-pitched voice.

“You need to secure this around your body,” a soldier tells me, handing me the rope. “I’ll tie it off up here so that you can climb down the embankment.” I nod, wrapping the rope around my waist. “When I get down there, slide my medical bag down,” I tell Wren. My ankle begins throbbing as I climb the steep embankment. It is too painful to support my weight and I start to slide backwards.

“Pull him up!” Aedon yells loudly over the wind.

Wren grabs my arm as soon as I’m close to the top. “I’ll go down.”

The rain starts up again as I’m tying a knot in his rope, tugging it to make sure it’s snug. “If you need help, I’ll find another way down.”

“Be careful,” Aedon tells him.

He starts his descent down, staying low to the concrete wall. Gusts of wind threaten to topple him over and torrents of rain make everything slick. He finally makes it down, already knee-deep in the river. I slide the medical bag down the wall to him, not taking my eyes off him until he enters the pipe.

Minutes later, the fireman’s radio goes off next to me. “The doctor says he needs a hand down there,” he tells me.

I start forward with the rope but Aedon stops me. “I’ll go.”

“Over my dead body. It’s way too dangerous.”

“You can’t make it down that wall with your injured ankle. You’ll crash to your death,” she barks, and yanks the rope out of my hands.

“At least let me secure you.” I tie a knot and yank it tight, causing her body to lunge into mine. “So help me God, you better be safe.” I catch her off-guard, pulling her closer to capture her mouth with a kiss. She catches me equally off-guard by letting me. She blinks raindrops from her eyes as I pull back. She opens her mouth to say something, but instead turns to climb down the wall.

I watch as she takes each step down. Near the bottom she stumbles to her knees but recovers quickly. The water has risen so much by now that it is already up to her waist. One of the firemen helps her make her way to the entry of the pipe.

She’s only in there a minute before I take the radio from the fireman next to me. “Talk to me. What’s going on down there?”

Wren’s voice comes through. “Both of her legs are broken and a couple of ribs. She is having trouble breathing from a hemothorax. Aedon is going to decompress the lungs while I stabilize her compound fracture. We’ve got to get her out of here, she’s barely out of the water. She landed on a metal pipe that’s protruding through her side. There is no way to cut it off, so we are going to have to lift her up and off it.”

“Work fast, I can see the water rising from here.”

Ten minutes later, the woman is being lowered down out of the pipe and placed on a gurney. Fireman are carrying her to the rope, so she can be pulled up. When they have her secure, I help pull her up the concrete wall. I look over and see Aedon and Wren climbing out of the pipe. At that exact moment, the earth starts to shake, knocking us to the ground. We manage to keep a firm hold on the rope. I can hear a scream, but I can’t see what’s going on.

The tremors give way enough to stand and pull her the rest of the way up. Looking over the edge, I don’t see Aedon or Wren. The firemen take off running down the river, several of them being overtaken by the water. I glance downstream and see the rushing water carrying off Aedon, but there is no sign of Wren.

I take off at a full sprint, despite my protesting ankle. I run further down the grassy area to another small bridge that is barely standing. Sliding down the embankment on my ass, I grab onto one of the logs sticking out of the bridge.

“Take my hand!” I yell over the rushing water and wind.

Aedon reaches out and I’m able to grab onto her, but the water is swift and pulling both of us. I manage to pull her up enough for her to grab onto the log. “Where’s Wren?”

“I don’t know,” she says, coughing. Blood is running down the right side of her face from a gash above her eyebrow.

Over her right shoulder, I see a head bobbing in the water. It’s Wren, and he’s floating face-down. “Stay here!” I yell, diving into the water.

When I resurface, I let the current take me to him as I swim. I manage to turn him face-up with my body underneath him to hold him above the surface. Water splashes in my face and blurs my vision, but I can make out someone a few hundred feet down the river throwing out a rope.

As the water pushes us toward it, I snag it in my hand and quickly wrap it around Wren. The man that threw it out manages to hold on until several members of the rescue team make it to him to help pull us out. I hold on tight to Wren as they pull us up.

By the time I get my bearings, Aedon has already started CPR on Wren. I take over compressions and she breathes for him.

“Damn it, Wren, wake up!” she yells at him. He gurgles and rolls to his side. She sits beside him and puts his head in her lap. I lay down next to him with my hands covering my eyes, elbows in the air. I breathe out hard, rolling to my side to look at him. Her hands are running through his hair and she’s softly singing Tin Man to him. She used to sing this to me to soothe me when I came down from my highs. I swear she sounds just like Miranda Lambert.

“Hey there, Mr. Tin Man, glad we talked this out. You can take mine if you want it, it’s in pieces now. By the way there, Mr. Tin Man, if you don’t mind the scars, you give me your armor, and you can have my heart.”

It does the trick for both of us. His breathing slows to a normal pace and my heart quits racing. Wren sits up, hanging is head between his knees. I follow suit, but face Aedon. I push the wet hair out of her face, inspecting the cut above her eye. I lean in and kiss her nose, then stand, taking her with me. I put my hand out for Wren to take.

“Thanks, man,” he says as he stands and hugs both of us to him.

“I think we’ve had enough for one day.” I say. One of our rescue team members hands me his Bluetooth. I check for mine, but I must have lost it in the water. I turn on the speaker and hear Ander yelling.

“What the hell is wrong with the three of you? I saw all of you in that water and I wanted to die. I can’t believe you risked your lives like that. I’m sitting here watching and there is not a damn thing I can do to help…”

“Ander, calm down.” I cut him off before he hyperventilates. “We’re all okay.”

“All I’m saying is you scared the shit out of me!”

I hand the Bluetooth to Aedon. “Could you sing to him and calm his ass down?” The three of us burst out laughing.

“What’s so damn funny?” He’s still yelling.

“I’ll let you in on it later, but I promise we’re all okay,” she says, trying to console him.

“Don’t ever do that to me again,” he says.

“You need to get some sleep too, man,” Wren tells him.

“Who can sleep? I’m running on pure adrenaline.”

Aedon steps away and starts singing to him, and he settles right down.

“Thank you for saving me,” Wren says seriously.

“You’re my partner. Besides, I couldn’t deal with the two of them by myself,” I laugh, patting him on the shoulder.