I made a sound I didn’t know a human being could make.
“Baby! Baby, I’m here! Mommy’s here! Are you hurt?”
“I’m cold.” Her voice was small and shaking and far away. “I’m really cold, Mommy. And there’s water.”
Deputy Hollis was already on his radio. “Found her! We found her! Culvert under Ten Mile Road, south side, about half a mile east of the subdivision. She’s alive. Get me EMS down here now. And get me somebody small.”
Water was running along the bottom of the culvert. I could see it in my flashlight beam, rushing over the concrete. The rain was getting heavier. And the water was rising. I watched it creep up the sides of the pipe while I knelt there.
“How far in is she?” Hollis asked.
“I can’t tell. Birdie, honey, can you see my light?”
“A little bit,” she said. “Way far away.”
The pipe was too narrow for Deputy Hollis. He’s six-foot-three with shoulders like a refrigerator. He tried. He got halfway into the opening and got stuck.
I started to crawl in myself. The older volunteer grabbed my arm.
“Ma’am, you’re shaking too hard. If you get stuck, we’ve got two people to get out.”
The young volunteer was already pulling off his orange vest and his rain jacket. He was maybe twenty-two, skinny as a fence rail, with wet blond hair plastered to his forehead.
“I’ve got it,” he said. “I’m the smallest one here.”
His name was Arlen Pike. I found that out later. He was a junior at Boise State studying to be a paramedic. He’d been a search-and-rescue volunteer for eight months. This was his first real find.
He got down on his stomach in the brown water. He put his flashlight between his teeth. He crawled into that pipe on his elbows, into the dark, and disappeared.
I knelt in the mud at the opening and held onto the concrete and prayed out loud. I didn’t even know what I was saying. Edgar sat on top of the pipe above my head, perfectly still now. Not making a sound. Watching the darkness, just like me.
I could hear Arlen’s voice echoing in the pipe. Talking low and calm.
“Hey, Birdie. My name’s Arlen. Your mom sent me. I really like your boots.”
The longest two minutes of my life.
Then I heard scraping. Splashing. Arlen’s voice getting closer.
“Okay. Okay, here we go. Hold on to my neck. Good job. You’re doing so good.”
He backed out of that pipe on his knees, soaking wet, covered in mud.
Holding my daughter.
Sophia Rivers is an experienced News Content Editor with a sharp eye for detail and a passion for delivering accurate and engaging news stories. At TheArchivists, she specializes in curating, editing, and presenting news content that informs and resonates with a global audience.
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