For this writing prompt, I thought it would interesting to take a literal approach…

A Last Ditch Effort

There has to be a way. She repeated this to herself again as the blue circle of sky above her darkened and a lone star twinkled in the dusk. The packed dirt walls around her, already cold, being so far underground, grew colder. She didn’t want to be trapped here. In the dark. As if buried alive. There has to be a way.

Her ankle throbbed. It was swelling, definitely broken. After the shock of the long fall, she had assessed her condition. The break was the most painful. She had bruised her legs and sides badly, scraped her hands. From trying to climb out, trying to find footholds and handholds in the packed earth, she had made the injuries worse. But what else could she do? 

The sides of the ditch were vertical and just far enough apart that she was unable to spider crawl up, even if the foot wasn’t throbbing. The hole was obviously man-dug, being so perfectly round and tampered on the sides. But it had been abandoned. She theorized that it may have been a hole drilled for water or oil or ore that was not to be found. 

Not to be found. She did her best to keep panic buried, as it were. Action helped. Think. There has to be a way.

There was no service on her cell, ironic as she had taken the hike to “unplug,” orienteering being something she always thought she’d like to try. She had only looked up for seconds to see the osprey squealing overhead when the world disappeared beneath her. Though she told herself not to, she replayed the scene in her head over and over, trying to take a different path, to look down in time, to reach an alternate ending, as if this were just some bad dream, a scene in someone else’s movie.

There has to be a way. Come on, Darby, think. She had yelled for help until her throat was raw, then called out in intervals since then. She had dug rocks out of the packed dirt, her fingernails caked, and thrown them up out of the hole, straining her arm. Some dropped back down on her head in cynical rain. She had listened carefully for human conversation or footfalls. But she was off-trail. Only the muffled rustle of leaves answered her. Periodically, she moved, did knee lifts, circled her hips, wiggled toes and fingers, made circles with the good foot then each arm, a sort of condensed Hokey Pokey. Anything to stay warm, keep moving. Breathe. And think about anything but the walls, the depth, the smallness of the space, the pain, the isolation, the desperation of her situation. No one’s coming. No. There has to be a way.

Now, without water for hours, her tongue was dry and chalky. It felt like her skin might crackle. Even small motions were becoming harder. Her body threatened in its heaviness, its fragile machinery. No. Don’t think about that. Think past the physical self. Think out of this ditch. She turned on her phone and turned the light up to the surface. “Help! Somebody. Help,” she cried, only she could barely generate a voice anymore. 

One step. It had been one step without looking, before falling longer than a person should, bumping from wall to wall on the way down, a ragdoll tossed into a garbage chute.

It only takes an instant for life to change direction completely. She knew this. One small move. But how many times would it happen to her? Her life had already derailed. When Jordan walked off that curb and the Volvo driver, looking at his cell phone, drove through the red light. And through Jordan. One small move. Instead of his huge presence in her life, the wedding, the future they talked about with kids, she was left alone with grief and questions and disbelief and anger, inertia, pity, a void.  

She had learned to stand up straight for the sake of others, his mom and sister, her parents. But you can’t go back to the person you were after a loss like that. No matter how hard you try. Synapses in the brain change. Her eyes saw everything differently, and not as she would have expected. Morning commuters looked gray and robotic. Strangers fake. At the same time, ladybugs were bigger, sunsets brighter. Jordan was everywhere and nowhere. Her HR job—which had been fine—now bored her. Comedians on Netflix were funny as hell one moment and made her cry the next. Lacing up running shoes was laborious, but the run itself, endorphins released, brought feverish gratitude. 

She flashed and waved the light of her phone upwards, lighting the silhouetted pine boughs while doing a weak march in place. Battery was at 40%. Come on. Anybody. 

What was she just thinking? Yes, there has to be a way. Oh, but she was tired. So tired. She admonished herself now for the wasted energy of the panic attack that had finally broken through earlier. When she still had tears. It had taken ages to breathe and sob through it. She couldn’t get that energy back now. Once again, she longed for her backpack, which she had slipped off stupidly and placed on a boulder in order to find a place to pee. In it was water and food and a jacket. So cold. So tired. So thirsty.

Death. Die. No, those words were not allowed. No. But the words invaded her thoughts anyway, viral parasite, invading enemies. Jordan had died. She might die—tonight. Of dehydration, hypothermia. If she perished there, people would probably say she committed suicide because of Jordan, wandered into the woods alone to die. They’d shake their heads. It was a broken heart, they’d say. 

But that wasn’t her. Yeah, her heart still hurt. Every day. But despite his absence, she was starting to feel like she could move on in her new Jordan-less reality. It was her liveliness that he first fell in love with. He told her that. She owed it to him to live her life. She was full of life. And so young. 

They’d say that too. Death. Poor thing, so young. Too soon.

No, no, no. There has to be…Optimism was getting harder to fabricate, resignation so close, it was like her shadow, like a light shirt, like the cold air creeping into her bones. But she didn’t want to die.

It’s just a damn hole! Think. There has to... She stared at the phone, willing it to find service, to sing her the answer. Music. Worth a try. She looked into her music library. Old AC/DC, Highway to Hell. It was the loudest thing she could think of. She turned it on, reaching her arm up with the phone as far as she could, still at least five feet below the surface. Not loud enough. But she had no more ideas. This was it, her last-ditch effort, so to speak. How strange the music sounded, the frenetic drums, the youthful rebellion. It was like a sick joke in that dank, constricting, cold darkness. The song triggered memories. Laughter on a worn couch with a circle of college friends, a party somewhere with pink and green balloons on the floor, the ocean out the window of her car on Highway 1 on that road trip to Anaheim. 35%. The battery power was going fast. Please, please, she whispered to the sky far above her, the world, her world. There has to be a way. Doesn’t there? 

It can’t end like this.