Tracy awoke to the warmth of the sun on her dirty face. Her eyes fluttered open and she squinted, trying to gauge her surroundings. I’m on the ground, she thought. She smelled burning wood and remembered that she was at the bottom of the leaf pile. The burning wood must have been coming from the fire Dad always liked to start on cool fall days. She smiled as she took in the comforting smell. She wiggled her hands in the dirt, feeling for the cool leaves that weren’t there.
Maybe I’m not in the leaf pile, she thought, looking around. The walls of the cave were dappled with shadows that looked like tree branches. That’s odd, Tracy thought. Maybe I’m in the tree.
Tracy tried to sit up and felt the daggers of pain shoot through every part of her body. Her scream echoed out of the cave as tears burst from her eyes. “Daddy!” she called out to the empty cave.
After a few moments of lying in pain, Tracy caught her breath and started to remember where she was. She was in a cave. Paul was there. But she couldn’t see him. Maybe he was outside, getting food again.
“Paul!” she cried softly, trying not to rouse the pain in her burning lungs. “Paul!” Tracy had no way of knowing, but her cry was barely a whisper. Even if anyone had been passing by on the rocky beach, they never would have heard her over the crash of the waves.
Tracy tried to piece her thoughts together into some sensible order, but she couldn’t. Memories of hiking with Paul, images of the leaf pile beneath the tree and bonfires on the beach all ran together creating messy patchwork that confused Tracy even more. She was sure Paul had to be there. There was no way she would have gone hiking by herself, at least not overnight. And she had obviously stayed overnight because she was lying down in a cave.
As the sun warmed her face, her memory cleared. She looked outside and saw the palm trees and rocks. Then she remembered it all at once. Panic rose in her as she recalled the car accident, the rain, the snake. She remembered Paul being there and having to leave to get help. She remembered him telling her to breathe slowly and not move her leg.
Her leg! Tracy tried to sit up and look at it, but the pain of her broken rib shot through her, stealing her breath away in one excruciating gasp. When she could muster the energy, she pushed herself up a little and looked down at her leg. The towels that Paul had wrapped it in were stained dark brown with dried blood. Tracy wondered if that was a good sign – if no fresh blood meant the wound had finally clotted. She couldn’t be sure. After all, Paul was the paramedic, not her.
She tried to reach for her leg to lift the towel and saw her hand shake violently as she put it out in front of her. The movement made her weak, and she fell back against the makeshift bed.
“Okay, okay,” she said. “Just calm down. It’s going to be okay. Everything is going to be alright,” she said to herself, not believing a word of it. “Paul’s going to get help and bring it back, and everything will be just fine.”
Tracy’s stomach rumbled loudly as she spoke. She turned her shaking head slightly and saw the coconut and water bottle. She guessed she had enough water to get through another day or two. Reaching her shaking hand over, she grabbed for the water bottle but knocked it over completely, spilling all of its precious contents on the dirt floor.
Fresh tears ran down her face leaving clean streaks on her earth-powdered cheeks. She closed her eyes and wept, letting the shaking take over. Tracy breathed in and out in short gasps, knowing full well that she could hyperventilate, but not caring. She was tired. She was cold. She was thirsty. She was alone. And she was scared.
“Why? Why are you letting this happen to me?” Tracy screamed out and heard her words repeated back in an echo. It was as if God were mocking her.
“I don’t want to die, God! I’m not ready to die!” Tracy cried hard in rapid bursts while she fought to keep a coughing fit at bay.
“I want to live. I want to get married, have a family, teach my kids.” Tracy laughed in the midst of her pleas. She wanted to get married? Just a few days ago, she wasn’t sure she could even face Paul and now, here she was, saying she wanted to get married.
“I love Paul, and I want to spend the rest of my life with him. I want to marry him, have babies with him and grow old with him.” Tracy let the words fall out of her like her tears. She listened as nobody responded and thought about Paul. Was he safe? Had he made it to the road? Was he injured? Was he alive?
Tracy thought about what she was saying. Everything she had asked for was for her. She wanted God to spare her so that she could get married, so that she could have children, so that she could live happily ever after. She wanted to be rescued so that she could heal and live the life she wanted. It was all for her. She realized how selfish she was being. She realized that perhaps she had always been this selfish.
Images of Paul floated in front of her. She saw him the first day they met, standing in Esther’s apartment. She remembered how handsome she thought he was when she flirted with him outside of the emergency room. Then the proposal; how she wasn’t sure she wanted to get married. But rather than being honest, she chose to be selfish with the truth and say yes to Paul. Even the church they picked had been her idea.
“Oh God, I’m so sorry,” Tracy cried. “I have been so selfish. Everything I’ve asked you for is for me! For my own wants, my desires, my needs. I have not asked for someone else. It’s all been about me.”
Tracy breathed in and out slowly, recalling all of the events in the past four years. “Even Courtney’s wedding. I didn’t want her to marry Kenneth because I didn’t want to be uncomfortable. I didn’t want to come here because I didn’t want to be stuck on an island with Paul for days.” She laughed thinking about what had happened. “Now look at me, I’m stuck in a cave with him, instead.”
The reality of Paul’s absence began to sneak into her mind, bringing a mountain of fear with it. She had been stuck in a cave with Paul. But now he was gone, and she was alone.
“God, I’m sorry. Please forgive me for my selfish ways. Please forgive me for wishing Courtney and Kenneth wouldn’t get married. For wishing that Paul wouldn’t come to the wedding. For wishing I didn’t have to face Margo and Howard. God, please forgive me for Joseph.”
Tracy’s heart skipped a beat when the thought of Joseph entered her mind. She had been gone for ... she didn’t even know how long she had been gone. And she hadn’t contacted Joseph once. He had to be worried about her. And when she did contact him, what would she say? She didn’t love him. She had never really loved him. She had just used him to satisfy her own need for companionship.
“God, please forgive me for how I have strung Joseph along and played with his tender emotions. He’s a nice guy. I should have never stayed with him this long. He deserves better. He deserves someone who truly loves him and wants to spend the rest of their life with him. He deserves someone other than me.”
Tracy rested, tired from her cries, tired from the painful journey of self-discovery. Before she closed her eyes, she prayed one more time.
“God, please keep Paul safe. Not for me, not for my safety, but for his!”
She laid there, spent from her words and tears. She was too tired to try to drink the water from the coconut. She was in too much pain to reach for the remaining berries. All she could do was sleep.
As the evening came, Tracy found it harder to stay conscious. Her body felt like a slab of meat in the refrigerator, and the night brought hallucinations from her childhood.
When she awoke the next morning, Tracy had no idea what day it was or how long she had been alone in the cave.
Hymns from her youth crept into her mind, and she began singing them inside her head. She remembered all of the words as if she had just sung them yesterday. But it had been years since she had been in church singing any of the old classics. She let the words fill her spirit and lift her up. When she ran out of songs, she prayed.
“God, I know you’re here,” a clear minded Tracy spoke. The sun was high, and she was able to recall where she was and the gravity of her situation. “I know I am not alone. I can feel you. Even though I don’t know what is going to happen, I trust you. I just want to make sure that I have repented for everything I’ve done. I want to be forgiven. I need to be forgiven.”
Tracy began talking about all of the bad things she had done in her life. There weren’t many, but there were things that she felt guilty about. She watched her life play out in her mind like a long movie, each year being accounted for. As she saw areas that she was ashamed of or regretted, she brought those before God and asked forgiveness.
She went as far back as she could remember, starting with the time she stole the last piece of pie and never told anyone. Tracy repented for gossip, for mean thoughts she had about others, for real transgressions and imagined hurts. She asked forgiveness for all of the ill feelings she had toward her mother. She wasn’t sure why, didn’t remember the hallucination, but for some reason, she had a new sense of compassion for her mother. She lifted her mother up to God and asked Him to watch over her and bring her peace.
Tracy asked God to bless Courtney and Kenneth’s wedding. Even though she wasn’t sure that Kenneth and Courtney were getting married for the right reasons, they seemed to genuinely love each other, and she wanted God to bless that union. She also asked God to show Courtney that no matter how much Kenneth loved her, the only true love that she could always count on would be the love of God.
“Please let her understand that, God. Speak to her heart and show her that you are her forever husband.”
Tracy spoke softly and slowly, covering all of the events in her life. She felt like she was performing a final act of contrition of sorts, a final confession. She knew her condition was deteriorating quickly. The water was almost gone, and her breathing was shallow and labored. Tracy had no idea how quickly night would come but was uncertain if she would be alive in the morning. She let her spirit accept the inevitable – she might not make it. The confession seemed like the most natural thing in the world. If she wasn’t going to get out of the cave alive, she had to make sure she was alright with God before he took her home to heaven.