My parents suggested a “celebration flight” for my newborn, so I climbed into their plane. But midflight, Mom yelled, “We don’t want your baby!” My sister cackled, “Farewell, nuisances!” while Dad swung the door open and shoved me and my baby outside. Hours later, they saw the news, panicked, and called me…

Chapter 4: The Green Abyss

There is no elegant way to describe the sensation of falling from the sky. It is a sensory overload so profound that the brain simply short-circuits. The roar of the wind was absolute, a physical pressure attempting to crush my eardrums. The air was freezing, violently punching the breath from my open mouth.

Instinct, ancient and maternal, overrode the paralyzing terror.

I didn’t flail. I didn’t reach for the sky I had just been thrown from. I curled my body into a desperate, hardened shell around Lily. I crossed my arms tightly over her fragile back, tucking my chin down to press her small, wool-hatted head into the hollow of my throat. I became a human roll cage, offering my spine to the earth.

The ground rushed up to meet us with terrifying velocity. I saw a sprawling ocean of dark green.

The forest.

We hit the canopy.

The impact did not come all at once. It was a brutal, staccato series of collisions. We crashed through the highest branches, the thick pine needles whipping across my face like razor blades. A thick branch caught my left leg, spinning my body violently in the air, disorienting my sense of up and down.

The trees didn’t catch us gently. They didn’t save us. They merely acted as a massive, violent brake, shredding momentum through blunt force trauma.

Crack.

Something unyielding slammed into my left side. The impact tore through my ribs with a blinding flash of white-hot agony. My left arm, wrapped securely around Lily’s lower half, snapped against a trunk with a sickening, audible crunch.

We plummeted through the thick foliage, snapping twigs and tearing through vines, the world a chaotic blur of green, brown, and pain.

Then, a final, bone-jarring thud against the damp earth.

And then… stillness.

The silence of the forest was absolute, ringing in my ears louder than the plane’s engine. I lay on my right side, half-buried in a bed of decaying pine needles and shattered branches.

My body felt entirely wrong. My left arm throbbed with a sickening, radiating heat, useless and twisted at a strange angle. Every breath I took felt like a jagged shard of glass grinding against my lungs. My head swam in a dark, heavy fog. I couldn’t move my legs.

Panic, colder and sharper than the wind, pierced the fog.

Lily.

I couldn’t feel her moving. I couldn’t hear her.

“Lily,” I tried to croak, but blood and dirt choked my throat.

I forced my right eye open, my vision blurred with red. I used my one good, trembling arm to push myself up an inch, looking down at the bundle strapped to my chest.

For ten seconds, the universe held its breath.

Then, a sound. Thin, reedy, and profoundly furious.

Lily began to cry.

It was the most beautiful sound I had ever heard. Relief hit me harder than the impact of the ground. It washed over me in a massive, overwhelming wave, bringing hot tears tracking through the dirt on my face. She was alive. I had shielded her.

I collapsed backward into the dirt, wrapping my good arm tightly around her small body. I stared up through the jagged hole we had torn through the pine needles, looking at the distant, innocent blue sky.

Stay awake, I commanded myself, the darkness tugging at the edges of my vision. You have to stay awake for her.

Minutes bled into hours. The cold seeped into my bones. Lily cried until she exhausted herself, eventually falling into a fitful whimper against my chest. I fought the urge to close my eyes, counting the branches above me, reciting pediatric dosages in my head to keep my brain functioning.

Eventually, the silence broke.

Voices. Distant, but cutting through the trees. The crackle of a two-way radio. The heavy crunch of boots on dry brush.

“Spread out! Look for broken canopy!”

I tried to shout, but my voice was a broken wheeze. I managed to lift my right hand, weakly rattling a dry branch beside me.

Footsteps rushed closer.

“Over here! I’ve got them! We need a bus at the logging road, now!”

Two faces appeared above me, wearing the green uniform of the state forest patrol. Their eyes were wide with shock.

“Don’t move, ma’am,” one of them said, his hands moving quickly, expertly over my shoulders. Someone unclipped the baby carrier, lifting Lily with a terrifying, careful speed.

“My baby,” I gasped, the pain flaring as they separated us.

“She’s breathing. She looks okay,” the other patrolman said, pressing a thick wad of gauze to a gash on my forehead I hadn’t realized I had. He leaned in close, his voice steady and anchoring. “Stay with me. Don’t drift away. Your baby is okay.”

I finally let the darkness take me.

rede more page 4