Part 2: The Desperate Rescue

The moment gravity took hold, my entire world collapsed into a breathless, terrifying slide. I had pushed myself into a narrow opening, hoping to find a wider cavern, but instead, the earth swallowed me. I slid downward, the rough rock tearing at my clothes, until my chest and hips became impossibly wedged in the unforgiving stone. I was plunged into a suffocating darkness, trapped in an unmapped place, about 100 feet underground through a series of complex, winding tunnels.

The immediate realization of my physical position was a profound shock to my system. I wasn’t just stuck; I was inverted. My head was pointed directly down toward the center of the earth, and my feet were angled sharply above me. I would later learn that I was trapped at a severe, nearly 70-degree angle. Every time I exhaled, the rock walls seemed to close in just a millimeter more, settling against my ribs and refusing to let my chest expand fully on the next breath.

“Josh! Josh, are you there?” I yelled into the blackness.

My voice bounced off the claustrophobic walls, sounding thin and desperate. “Josh, do you hear me?” I called out again. The silence that followed was the heaviest, most terrifying sound I had ever experienced. I wondered wildly if the electricity station was toying with me, if the universe was playing some cruel trick. I screamed for him, begging for help. “Come on Josh… Save me. Save me, George,” I yelled, my panic causing me to stumble over my own words. “Josh, I can’t hear you. Josh, are you near me?”.

Then, a sound filtered through the dense rock. It was surreal, almost absurd in the face of my mounting terror. It was Josh, and he was singing.

“Hang the boat gently down Stream Fun fun,” his voice echoed down the tunnel, a childhood tune he was using to mask his own fear as he navigated the dark. “Oh, here you are. Gentle stream. See?” he called out, his voice shaking but trying to remain light.

Even in my panic, I couldn’t believe it. “You sing this song again? Among all the other songs,” I gasped out, the absurdity of the moment offering a tiny, fractured sliver of relief. He was singing that song in all the strong tunnels one can enter down here.

Suddenly, his light hit my boots. “I see you,” Josh said, his voice dropping its playful facade, replaced instantly by raw, unfiltered dread. “John. John. Oh, you. Oh.”.

He had found me, but the reality of my predicament immediately hit him. The tunnel leading to my trapped body was dangerously tight. I could barely move my arms. “Don’t go in here,” I warned him immediately, terrified he would become wedged right behind me.

“Can you pull me out?” I asked desperately. I tried to reach back, to grasp anything, but I was immobilized. “I can’t pull my hand,” I told him.

Josh tried to maneuver in the impossibly tight space above my legs. It wasn’t a good idea for him to wedge himself in too far. “Let me try another way,” he said, his breathing ragged in the dark. He was trying to think, trying to find an angle, but it was so dark and so incredibly tight. “I can’t think of a way,” he admitted, the despair leaking into his voice. He was impressed by how far I went down there, but he was terrified. I told him to stop, not to come down any further because I wouldn’t let him get stuck too.

He refused to give up. He looked at my legs extending up toward him. “I will wrap your legs and pull,” Josh announced, his voice hardening with determination. I agreed. It was our only immediate option.

“Okay. One, two, three,” we counted together.

I felt Josh’s hands wrap securely around my calves. He braced himself against the walls of the chute above me. “You know what we do? I will drag you out of here,” he said. He told me to push as he pulled, trying to coordinate our movements. He hauled backward with all the strength in his body, straining in the narrow gap.

For a fraction of a second, I felt a shift. A tiny scrape of movement. But then, gravity and the brutal friction of the stone won. The rock held me in a vice grip. Josh lost his leverage, and as he let go to catch himself, I slipped.

I slid back down, wedging myself even deeper and tighter into the crevice. The pain was sharp, but the psychological blow was devastating.

“No,” Josh gasped, realizing what had just happened. “What a mistake.”.

He asked if I was in pain, if I was okay. I lied. “No, no, I’m fine. It’s okay,” I told him, though my chest was screaming for air. We realized then that our strength alone was useless against the mountain. We needed a professional team. We needed to help John, he muttered, realizing he couldn’t be the hero today.

I told him to go, to run and get help. But my brother, my loyal, brave brother, refused. “I won’t leave you here,” he insisted stubbornly.

I knew he had to. Every minute I spent upside down was a minute my body was failing. “Don’t think about me anymore, I’ll still be here,” I told him, trying to inject a dark, grim humor into the nightmare. “Run, it’s okay.”. He hesitated, torn between his instinct to stay by my side and the logical necessity of finding a rescue crew. Finally, he understood. He told me to just try my best, to breathe. “Breathe, John. Hey John, open it up,” he said, reminding me that I had been down there for a long time. He promised he was looking for me, and then the sound of his crawling faded away, leaving me alone in the crushing dark.

The wait that followed was an agonizing test of mental endurance. The silence was absolute, broken only by the raspy, strained sound of my own breathing. I was alone, trapped inside the earth.

Because I was hanging upside down, my body began to react in unnatural ways. Gravity was doing things to my physiology that I, as a medical student, understood all too well. My mouth quickly became full of saliva. It pooled in the back of my throat. Because of my inverted position, I couldn’t swallow it properly. “I feel like if I don’t spit it out constantly, then it will run up my nose,” I realized with a rising sense of panic. I had to constantly force myself to spit into the dust beneath my face, fighting a perpetual feeling of drowning in my own fluids.

I tried to keep my mind off the physiological reality of my situation. I thought about the textbooks I had been studying just days ago. The body will not survive long at a 70-degree angle. The veins in my head and upper body were taking the full force of my blood pressure. Eventually, the veins leak, the blood bursts, and things get incredibly difficult for the heart. I knew the morbid timeline; considering how long I had already been stuck, in a few hours my body would start going into a state of shock, and in 6 to 8 hours, my body would stop working entirely.

I forced those thoughts away. I thought of Emily. I thought of her warm smile, the way she teased me about my lost wedding ring earlier that day. I thought of our beautiful little girl, and the new life growing inside her. I had to get back to them. I had to survive this.

Hours bled into one another. The temperature down there was surprisingly warm, which caused me to sweat profusely, leading to rapid dehydration. The stone pressed relentlessly against me, unyielding and cruel.

Then, I heard it. The faint, muffled sound of movement from far above. Voices.

Eventually, a light broke the darkness, casting long, eerie shadows down the shaft that held my legs. Someone had arrived. The rescue had begun.

A woman’s voice, calm and steady, drifted down the tight passageway. “Rescue has arrived,” she announced. She tried to bring a sliver of lightness to the suffocating atmosphere. “My lover’s name is Susie. We’ll get you out of here quickly,” she said.

“Hi Susie, I’m John,” I called back, my voice hoarse from yelling and spitting.

Susie immediately set to work assessing the situation. She told me that Josh was safe up top, but that the guilt was eating him alive. He often blames himself for what happened, she told me. My heart broke for my brother. I knew my family would think so too, and it was a terrible pity that he was carrying that weight.

Susie needed to figure out how tightly I was wedged. She noticed how my clothes were bunched up, adding extra bulk in the impossibly tight space. “Can I cut your pants off?” she asked. “This gives us more space.”.

I tried to lean into the banter, to hold onto my humanity in the dark. “Okay, my wife will love it,” I joked. I explained that Emily would probably be thrilled because she absolutely hates these pants, and I usually keep my clothes until they completely fall apart.

But beneath the forced humor, Susie could see the severity of my situation. “This angle is not good for my body,” I confessed to her, feeling the pressure building in my head and chest. Susie knew I was in medical school. “Studying in medical school was a misfortune,” she said softly, understanding the unique torture of knowing exactly how your body is failing you. “Meaning you’ll know your guess better than any of us. Unfortunately,” she added.

She did what she could to make me comfortable, but there was no comfort to be found. She eventually had to leave me briefly to go back up and communicate with her team, promising to have someone stay with me. I thanked her for coming down here. It was Thanksgiving, after all. “Thank you auntie for coming down here… After eating turkey and wanting to stuff it,” I said, endlessly grateful that these strangers were giving up their holidays to save my life.

While Susie was gone, I could hear the faint, crackling echoes of the rescue team coordinating above. The situation they were facing was unprecedented. John is 26 years old, studies at BYU, and is stuck head down in a space that is almost entirely unmapped. The rescue team was facing an immense danger themselves. To even reach the tunnel above me, they had to squeeze their own bodies through a terrifyingly tight passage known as the Yellow Cat Stenosis. It was a grueling, claustrophobic crawl. The commanders were worried that if they put other rescuers in such a difficult position, they will also get stuck or injured.

I could hear the trauma care physician, Sherwin Hudson, assessing my chances over the radio. He confirmed my worst fears. I was very hungry, severely cramped, and stuck at a lethal angle. They discussed the terrifying reality that even if they got me out, there would be severe complications. The stagnant blood could rush back, entering my heart and potentially killing me on the spot.

They knew the clock was ticking down to zero. “The faster we act, the more chances he has,” a voice echoed down the rock. They needed their best person to lead the extraction. They needed a commander who knew the cave intimately.

“Gather everyone to rescue him. Who is the commander?” someone asked.

“Aaron,” came the reply.

They discussed if Aaron was ready, referencing a past incident, but agreed that he was the best man for the job. For many years, Aaron was there, meticulously making a map of this highly unique and dangerous cave system. If anyone could figure out the puzzle of the Nutty Putty stone, it had to be Aaron.

I lay there, upside down, spitting to breathe, waiting in the dark. I waited for this man named Aaron, praying that he brought with him a miracle.

Finally, a new light appeared in the crevice above my boots. A new face peered down into the gloom. He looked tired, but his eyes were sharp and focused.

“John?” the man called out, his voice a steady, grounding force in the terrifying dark. “Now? Now, I’m Aaron. Are you okay, man?”.

I looked up at the light, my head throbbing, my chest aching, my hope hanging by the thinnest of threads.

“Can you get me out of here?” I asked him, my voice breaking. “My head is upside down enough.”.

Part 3: Voices in the Dark

The light that broke through the suffocating blackness of the chute belonged to a man named Aaron. As his face peered down into the gloom, a sudden wave of desperate hope washed over me, mingling with the agonizing throbbing in my head.

“John?” his voice echoed down the tight, dusty rock face. “Now? Now, I’m Aaron. Are you okay, man?”.

I tried to tilt my neck back to look up at him, but the restrictive confines of the Nutty Putty stone made it nearly impossible. “Can you get me out of here?” I pleaded, my voice cracking under the immense physical and emotional strain. “My head is upside down enough”. I wanted to ask him why I was so stuck, why this particular crevice had to be the one to swallow me whole.

Aaron’s expression was a mixture of deep empathy and rigid, professional focus. He tried to keep the atmosphere calm, knowing that panic would only deplete my rapidly fading oxygen reserves. “I wish it was a longer and more interesting story,” I told him, trying to summon a fraction of my usual humor despite the crushing weight on my chest. “Of course it is,” he replied gently. “The real story will talk about how we got you out”.

The reality, however, was grim. My body was simply too big to be taken out easily. I had slid down too deep, wedging my hips and chest so tightly into the V-shaped chute that it was incredibly difficult for the rescue team to use their standard equipment. It looked like I had gone in and had to squeeze the very air out of my lungs just to get into the spot where I was currently stuck. Aaron knew, and I knew from my medical training, that this was a search and rescue scenario that was almost impossible. Yet, he looked down at me with unwavering resolve. “We will save you, Dude. That’s definitely the case,” he promised.

To keep my strength up, the team had rigged a long tube down the shaft to provide me with hydration. “I sent you a drink. Lemonade, right?” Aaron asked, trying to distract me from the burning sensation in my inverted legs.

I took a small, cautious sip, the liquid pooling awkwardly in the back of my throat due to my upside-down position. I grimaced. “I wondered who bought that crappy drink,” I rasped, trying to force a weak laugh. “And now I know that I can’t buy this lean rescue product yet… It’s disgusting. It’s something like dishwashing liquid”. Despite the terrible taste, I knew I needed it. “But I understand what you mean,” I added, acknowledging the necessity of the electrolytes. I joked that when we got out of there, they needed to give me some money so I could join the others and buy whatever they actually wanted to drink.

For a brief, agonizing moment, I felt a slight shift in my lower body. “Actually, my legs feel looser now,” I told Aaron, a sudden surge of adrenaline masking the exhaustion. I thought, let me try. I pushed with whatever strength I had left, grinding my hips against the unforgiving stone. But the pain flared instantly, sharp and suffocating.

“Stop, stop! Just leave me,” I cried out in sudden panic, the rock biting into my ribs. “Just let me, okay… Are you okay?” Aaron asked, his voice laced with concern as dust and debris rained down onto my face from my futile struggling.

“It’s great to see your face,” I murmured, my vision blurring at the edges. “Sorry I made dirt fall around me.”

“It’s okay,” Aaron reassured me. He explained that the rock down here was notoriously difficult to work with. It’s so easy to break fake light that it’s hard to clean, and furthermore, the wall is crazy—it’s both soft and hard. “It seems like this cave is alive,” he muttered.

The isolation and the inverted blood flow were beginning to play cruel tricks on my mind. Staring into the dark, undulating shadows of the rock just inches from my nose, my imagination started to run wild. “Don’t look backwards,” I whispered to Aaron, a shiver running through my trapped frame. “You will see it… I see a ghost.”.

“Don’t look up. You will see it. Did you see a ghost?” Aaron asked, trying to keep me grounded. “I do not know,” I mumbled, my mind drifting. “Hey, calm down,” he instructed firmly. He kept talking, trying to anchor me to reality. He quoted Einstein, talking about the definition of crazy being doing the same thing and expecting a different result. He was trying to figure out a new angle, a new method to free me without repeating the mistakes that had wedged me further.

I was so tired. The physical toll was immense. “I need you to try your best to push your body away,” Aaron told me at one point. “Will you help me?”.

“Hey… Your job… Too bad,” I panted, struggling for breath. “You know, I think the same thing about your job. It’s terrible”.

Aaron chuckled softly, a sound that brought a strange comfort in the dark. “You know I think the same about other people’s work,” he replied. “I get to go to amazing places and save lives… But agree. Now… It’s very bad”.

I needed to know the truth. My medical background wouldn’t let me accept blind optimism. “So what are your achievements?” I asked him, my voice barely a whisper. “Type… How many people have you freed? And how many people actually got out? What percentage? How much?”.

Aaron hesitated for a fraction of a second before answering. “So it’s all 100%. But sometimes it’s not favorable,” he admitted, the weight of his experience heavy in his words.

I took another sip from the tube. “Actually I can drink more now… Gatorade,” I said. “Are you sure it won’t be a problem?”. He assured me it wasn’t bad at all. “It’s not bad. I used to think it was something like dishwashing liquid, but I enjoyed drinking this,” I confessed. Aaron took that as a good sign.

But the good signs were fleeting. My heart rate was erratic, and the pressure in my head was becoming unbearable. Aaron noticed my struggles. “Don’t worry about me, okay? Please focus on breathing. Let’s breathe,” he instructed, his voice a steady metronome in the chaos of my failing body. “Slowly, slowly and gently. Okay, we’ll have some time here”.

To keep me awake, Aaron asked me to introduce myself. “Where do you come from?” he asked, reminding me again to encourage deep, slow, and easy breathing.

“I have a pretty normal life,” I started, my voice echoing off the stone. “If it’s deep then it’s quite boring. Just a normal person”.

“Give it here. Oh come on John,” Aaron prompted gently. “There is no such thing as normal. Everyone has their own story”.

So, I told him. I told him about growing up. “I come from Atyro. I have four brothers and two sisters,” I said, a faint smile touching my lips as I thought of the chaos of my childhood home. “My younger brother, John… And I do what you need to do… You can’t take it from me… Making life more and more difficult”. I talked about the pressure of being an older sibling. “I should have been an example for the children to follow. Take care of them and educate them,” I reflected. “Like I think my job is to help them become stronger”. I admitted that maybe doing this made me very happy, even though I still didn’t know how my parents managed such a massive, disruptive brood. “It’s crazy. I look at it and wonder how you do it… They are wonderful. And we were very disruptive”.

I told Aaron about how fun it was, how we would fight and joke with each other, but we were always together. “Josh needs me the most, so we always have each other, anytime, anywhere,” I said, a pang of intense sorrow hitting me as I realized Josh was up there right now, agonizing over my fate. I told Aaron how I was probably the most competitive and crazy person in the family. “I played basketball and soccer in high school,” I recalled, the memory of running free on an open field feeling like a dream from another lifetime. “And thanks to my family, I have the most fans”.

Suddenly, a loud, grinding noise vibrated through the rock, drowning out our conversation. “What’s that sound?” I panicked.

“It’s the sound of drilling. They’ve got two people drilling,” Aaron explained. They were trying to alter the rock face, trying to create an anchor point or widen the passage. The vibration rattled my teeth and sent fresh waves of nausea through me. “Can I drink more water?” I asked, needing something to focus on.

As the drilling subsided into a dull hum, Aaron tried to keep me talking. He asked if I had ever gone on a mission. “Ecuador,” I told him, remembering the heat and the vibrant colors that were so entirely different from this cold, dark hole. Aaron joked that it wasn’t anyone in Utah trying to get to Mormon Island, and asked if I had to speak Spanish. “That’s right, it’s very difficult to say. No, no, that’s very bad. Very bad,” I laughed weakly, remembering my struggles with the language. “Can you still say it? When you can… Nh no, it’s very bad,” I repeated.

The conversation inevitably turned darker. When you are buried alive, the veil between this world and the next becomes incredibly thin. “I spend a lot of time talking about life and death,” I murmured to Aaron. “And now… And now… I’m here. John, I’m sure death is right before my eyes”.

I looked up at Aaron’s silhouette. “Hey, I’m sure you’re also afraid to talk about life and death with people like me. Right?” I asked.

“I still avoid it,” Aaron admitted honestly. “Tell you the truth, man, I’m not interested in spiritual matters… Try to do a good job. Save the lake. They can know about life and death when they are on the ground where we haven’t been yet. So, be a rescuer”.

“I have faith, you have faith, I thought you were going to start preaching to me,” I told him.

“Are not. Are not,” Aaron quickly replied. “Each person has their own opinion. But… But it really makes me feel at peace. That’s why people often go to church”.

“For peace, I guess,” I whispered. “Maybe it would be better if more people thought like that. You know”.

The vulnerability in our conversation struck a chord. “Look at you holding back while with me,” I noted, feeling a strange kinship with this man who was fighting so hard for a stranger. “Oh my god. You want me to save you first, then you will rescue me?” I joked. “You are Italian. So I’m just saying that you are truly special, my friend”.

I asked Aaron about his own life, why he did this grueling work. “I don’t have a family like yours, John,” he revealed quietly, his voice carrying the weight of old scars. “And it happened in Montana and a few years ago… it was very shocking”. He told me about a tragedy that had shaped him. “And watching children grow up without dad… Makes me think that I thought why wasn’t I there. Today we lost 3 soul savers. They are all good people, all very good. Why do I live?”.

His survivor’s guilt resonated in the narrow space between us. “Gradually I will encounter these situations and say it yourself. Yes. If so, fine. This is my life and it is lived for me,” Aaron said, a hint of bitter resignation in his tone.

“That’s the worst idea I’ve ever heard,” I rebuked him weakly, my heart aching for his pain. “I mean, it sounds very boring. But if you want to die, what is interesting about life?”.

The heavy emotional toll of the conversation, combined with my physical deterioration, made me overwhelmingly sleepy. “I’m so tired,” I confessed.

To keep my brain active, Aaron pivoted the conversation back to the brightest part of my life. He asked about Emily. He wanted the whole story. “Are you planning on making me so curious? Come on. You have to tell me about the girl,” he insisted.

Just hearing her name sent a rush of warmth through my freezing, cramped limbs. “I still got hit. This is the first time I meet you,” I began, my mind drifting back to a brighter, easier time. I told him about how we met in class. “We’ll realize we’re in the same class. You also study too well”. I remembered how I desperately wanted to impress her. “He immediately wished he had more to talk about, but his mind was empty. I’m too chased beautiful,” I recalled.

I told Aaron about how clumsy I was around her initially. I remembered dropping things in front of her. “Hey, let me pick it up for you,” she had said. She asked if I was usually like this, dropping things. “No, it’s fate,” I had smoothly replied. “That means I’m usually like very agile… Yes to you, fate is nonsense. Fate, I guess. That is, my agility. Even agility, thanks to words. I’m a funny person, that’s just the way I am”. I told Aaron how I just wanted to make her laugh.

I recounted our first real date. We went fishing at midnight in the Rovo courtyard. “And you should, you’ll love it,” I had told her, trying to sound confident. I confessed to Aaron that I was actually a bit of a “bookworm” and had to arrange everything as quickly as possible. When we got to the water, it was pitch black. “It’s very dark here, be careful. Okay, you can bump into someone,” I had warned her.

Then came the embarrassing part. “So I’ll throw the hook into the water, isn’t that right?” I had asked her, trying to look like I knew what I was doing. But I completely botched the cast. “Then, wait, stop, stop, stop. Sorry, sorry, sorry. I think I even threw it far away. Is everyone okay?” I had yelled, terrified I had hooked an innocent bystander in the dark.

Emily had been so sweet about it. “It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay. Let me slowly take it, okay,” she had said. I kept apologizing, feeling like a fool. “Don’t say sorry. Know you’re working,” she told me. I admitted to Aaron that I didn’t like the fact that I didn’t know what I was doing. She ended up showing me how to fish. “You show me how to fish, so I don’t go crazy anymore, or bump into someone,” I recalled.

Despite the disastrous start, that night changed everything. “My game begins. I can’t say be nice in the morning. But that day I hugged her,” I told Aaron, a bittersweet tear finally escaping my eye and rolling upwards across my forehead. Emily had found a way to pray for fish, meaning she could just catch any fish effortlessly. But the fishing didn’t matter. “It’s just that it’s not about fish of course, it’s not about you, it’s not about me. Two weeks of dating, and we were hooked,” I whispered, the memory feeling like a lifeline. “It’s like a movie where everything comes true. Without her, the days would pass slowly. We are always together”.

The story flowed out of me, a desperate attempt to stay anchored to the surface world. I told Aaron about the time she went to Spain for a whole semester, four long months. “That landscape turned on the light. Emily is very beautiful. There’s no way back anymore. I knew I had to speak up,” I said.

When the time came to propose, it wasn’t easy. We were young. “I… Do you agree to marry me?” I had finally asked her. And her response had shattered me initially. “I’m sorry. I can’t. Refuse. Correct,” she had said. I explained to Aaron that marriage was a big deal to her. “And marriage is a big deal… And I cannot agree. Or maybe I can’t agree yet… And we’re young, you know,” she had reasoned with me.

But the biggest obstacle wasn’t just our age; it was my family. “My family does not accept it,” I admitted to Aaron, the old wounds throbbing dully alongside my physical pain. “My children have strong personalities and they are very powerful. Emily becomes enemy number one”.

My mother had been particularly harsh. I remembered her voice on the phone. “John, why do you spend time with her? She humiliated him to death… I mean, she’s a cruel person, John. Only evil people are evil from the depths,” she had claimed. My mother had pushed me to leave her. “You have to leave her, John. She is torturing you. Sure sure. Hell is no longer a description of what your brother is going through,” she had said. They tried to tell me there were a lot of fish in the sea.

But I knew my own heart. “But there is only one Emily. And there is only one John,” I told Aaron firmly. I refused to give up. “I don’t give up. I really like it… I will naturally be perfect for marriage,” I had resolved. I poured my heart out to Emily. “I told you everything that was in my heart. And I know you have doubts about me… About us,” I had told her. “And I know when I can spend the time I have on this earth with you, these days become very happy, very happy… And I can’t imagine a better future than one with you”. Finally, against the odds and the family friction, she had said yes.

Suddenly, my reminiscence was interrupted. A crackling sound came from a small radio receiver Aaron was adjusting near my head. Above ground, the rescue team had been working frantically. The situation had grown increasingly dire. I had been stuck for hours. The team knew I would croak if I didn’t hear a familiar voice, so they desperately worked to set up a communication system. “Install a communication system for me, okay?” someone had ordered.

Emily had arrived at the cave. She had been waiting for hours, refusing to leave. “I know I can’t help you guys,” she had told the rescue coordinators, Tom and Steve. “I just want to stay here that’s all. I just want to be here when he goes out. I just want to see him”.

Aaron held the radio closer to my ear. “She’s here, just a few more minutes,” he promised me.

Then, cutting through the static and the endless darkness of the Nutty Putty Cave, came the most beautiful sound in the world.

“John. John, do you hear me?” Emily’s voice was thick with tears but incredibly strong.

“Emily… Yes, yes I hear you, baby,” I sobbed, the emotional dam finally breaking. “I love you, I love you”.

“Everything will be fine. I love you too,” she cried through the radio. “Tell Lizzie you love her. I love you so much, are you okay?”.

“It’s okay, bro. Now… Now he is better than before,” I lied, wanting to protect her from the horrific reality of my position. “Sorry for making you worry. You shouldn’t be down here. Forgive me. I miss you. I miss you”.

Then, she delivered the words that shattered my heart into a million pieces. “John… I’m pregnant,” she said, her voice breaking on a sob. “Yes I’m pregnant. I will become dad again”.

A primal wail ripped from my throat. “You… I’m very… What a surprise. Oh Ems… I love you very much,” I wept, the tears stinging my eyes as they defied gravity. “You have to come up here. Is that okay? Because we will tell everyone together,” she pleaded.

“I know. I know. I have to get out of here. I love you. I’m sorry. I love you very much,” I cried frantically.

Hearing her voice, knowing about the new life she carried, flipped a switch of pure, unadulterated panic inside me. The claustrophobia, which I had been fighting to suppress for hours, hit me with the force of a freight train. I thrashed against the stone, tearing my skin, ignoring the agonizing pain.

“Get me out of here! Get me out of here! Get me out of here!” I screamed, my voice echoing violently in the small space. “I want out of here. I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be in this cave. I have to go out. I have to go out. Save me… Hey pull me away. Please pull me out of here!”.

“Calm down, come on, come on, man,” Aaron yelled over my panic, grabbing my shoulder to steady me. “It’s okay. Hey, hey. I need Thai to focus on breathing, okay? Calm down. I know it sounds weird, but Thai focus. Breathe, okay?”.

I fought for control, sucking in shallow, ragged breaths of the dusty air. “I just need to pray. I know it sounds stupid,” I gasped.

“No, it’s not stupid. Not stupid at all,” Aaron assured me. He kept coaching me. “I need you to focus on breathing… I know that sounds really weird. But I need you to think about your breathing. Okay. Exhale… And inhale. Come on. So breathe out. And breathe in. Hold on”.

The rescue team above had been working miracles. They had managed to drill into the solid rock and attach a wide planting system to create a complex pulley mechanism. They had a lifting system designed to hold me in a flat position, a seemingly impossible feat given how tightly I was wedged head-lower-than-my-feet.

The radio cracked again. The commanders above were checking in. “Are you ready? We’re ready. Okay, ready? We are ready,” the voices confirmed in a rapid-fire sequence.

Aaron looked down at me, his face illuminated by the harsh glare of his headlamp. “John, I want you to take a sip. Coming down here,” he instructed. “Hey you know, I want you to wake me up. We’re ready to pull you out”.

Hope, terrifying and fragile, flared in my chest. “Hey, what do we have on our to-do list?” Aaron asked, trying to keep me focused on the future. “We have to go to the gym and get out of here”. I smiled weakly. “I guess you can take me to church. Just fine for me”.

I reflected on everything I had realized down in this dark hole. “You know what still amazes me? I think I understand it all. A beautiful wife, family, career I want… Do you know what it takes to be a man? There is a baby girl,” I whispered, finding a strange peace in the absolute clarity of what truly mattered.

“Are you okay? We’re about to pull you out. Will you help me?” Aaron asked.

“Wait,” I croaked. “Can I tell Emily first?”.

They had to pull the communication cable back so it wouldn’t get caught in the heavy pulley strings. Aaron leaned in close. “She’s here John. She is with you. Okay… You promise me something. You promised me to tell Emily that anyway, I will be there when she gives birth,” Aaron said, his voice thick with emotion.

“I promise. I promise. I promise,” I swore into the darkness.

“I’ll get you out of here, John,” Aaron vowed.

The slack in the ropes above me tightened with a terrifying creak. The pulleys groaned under the immense strain. “Let’s get started,” the command echoed down the shaft.

“Okay, let’s start. Okay, okay. One, two, three, pull!”.

The force on my legs was agonizing. The ropes dug into my flesh, and the rock walls scraped violently against my ribs and hips as the immense pressure of the pulley system attempted to drag my wedged body backward against gravity.

“You did well, John. Keep it up. Come on John,” Aaron yelled encouragingly.

The pain was blinding. “You did great. Keep pushing. Still pulling. Okay. Okay, keep pushing. Pull. Come on. Okay, great job John. Try your best. Keep going. Continue. Pull,” the voices chanted, a desperate chorus in the dark.

For the first time in over twenty-four hours, I felt my body move upward. I was being pulled from the jaws of the earth. I focused all my remaining willpower on the thought of Emily, our little Lizzie, and the new life waiting for me in the sunlight above. I just had to hold on.