Louis came wading through the water toward me.
I thought he was coming to pull me out. Instead, he stepped right past me and scooped Amy into his arms.
"You grew up in these mountains. You're a strong swimmer. Just hang on. I'll get Amy out and come back for you."
"She's delicate. She can't take this."
My voice was already cracking. "Louis, the beam is crushing my leg. I can't get out."
It was the first time I'd ever let him see me weak.
And for a moment he froze, his eyes torn, something close to reluctance in them.
Amy clung to his neck, shaking all over.
"Louis, I'm so cold. I don't want to die in here."
In the end, Louis only held her tighter, kicked my hand off him, and turned toward the door.
"I told you, I'll come back for you. You're tough. You won't die. Don't drag Amy down with you."
Then he carried Amy out into the storm.
The water was still rising.
It reached my chest in no time.
The few able-bodied men who'd rushed in to help all turned and followed Louis out.
Not one of them stayed.
The water rose past my chin.
I hooked my arm around a snapped section of the beam and kept my face just above the surface.
My right leg had gone numb, no feeling left in it at all. Good. At least it didn't hurt anymore.
From very, very far away, I heard the motor of a rubber raft sputter to life.
It was the only one our village had, the one we used during floods to ferry emergency patients down to the hospital.
Just as my mind started to blur, I heard a sound that didn't belong to the storm.
Something was forcing its way down through the rain, sending roof tiles flying everywhere.
Then footsteps, splashing fast and heavy through the water.
Someone was clawing at the beam pinning me, prying at it with bare hands.
The beam was too heavy. He shouted for someone to bring hydraulic cutters.
There wasn't time. So he wedged his shoulder beneath the beam and forced it up by sheer strength.
I barely managed to open my eyes, just long enough to make out one face.
That man who was always so fastidious, whose face was always spotless, was now caked head to toe in mud.
Stewart Gilbert lifted me into his arms. His whole body was trembling.
The icy floodwater had soaked me until I was about to lose the last thread of consciousness.
Only one voice remained in my ears, over and over.
"Doris Dotson, you are not allowed to die."
"You are not allowed to die."
I woke up in the best hospital in the Capital City. The room was bigger than the house I'd lived in for over twenty years.
One whole wall was floor-to-ceiling glass, looking out over half the city's skyline.
Stewart sat at the edge of the bed, his hands wrapped in bandages, asleep against the back of his chair.
His assistant told me softly that he'd kept watch for four days and four nights straight.
There was a steel plate in my leg now, and the old scar on my face had been worked on too.
The top-three plastic and reconstructive team in the world. Stewart had bought out the entire department.
"Miss Dotson, Mr. Gilbert said no expense is to be spared. Whatever it takes to bring you back."
Hearing my voice, Stewart saw I was awake. He poured me a cup of warm water and brought the straw to my lips.
"How's the village?"
"Heavy damage. I've already arranged the funds to rebuild it."
He paused.
"Louis took Amy down to the town that night and didn't get back until daybreak. When he returned, the ancestral hall had collapsed and the helicopter was already gone."
"He assumed that since you grew up in the mountains, you'd climbed out on your own and were off sulking in the back hills."
I said nothing.
Stewart didn't ask again.
The days that followed were quiet in a way that didn't feel real. I had four surgeries in that hospital.
They took the shattered fragments of bone out of my leg one piece at a time, fixed it with a steel plate, and slowly it began to heal.
