Left alone
Left alone during a difficult time
“Mommy?” Elaine called out but her mother was nowhere in sight. All she could she is the rubble and debris that the recent earthquake caused. Elaine was only fifteen years old. She often heard about natural disasters such as earthquakes, hurricanes, tornados but she was never lucky to experience one. Despite the amount of drills she did at school she never ever would imagine it to be as devastating and intense as this.
It must have been only ten minutes since the disaster struck. Elaine was able to squeeze her way out from her safe place. Now she was on the search for her mother. They both came to the local grocery store to get some food items for dinner, minutes later they were separated by the after effects of the earthquake. Elaine heard voices in the distance, voices of persons trying to find their loved ones.
Mommy, where are you? she called out hoping her mother would respond. Finally she heard a muffled voice. She tried to follow the direction of the muffled sound.
Hello? she called.
“Help!” replied the voice. She knew she was getting closer to the trapped person because the voice became clearer and louder the further she went. “Help me!” the voice said again. Finally she was in the area that the voice was coming from and it seemed as if the person was trapped under a pile. Elaine began to lift the left heavy stones with the little strength she had left, desperately trying to free the person. The more stones she moved the clearer the person’s voice became and Elaine’s heart sunk when she finally realised that the voice was not her mother’s. Hoping her ears was playing tricks on her she tried and tried as hard as she could to get the person out of the pile.
She remembered the group of voices she heard earlier and tried to see if she could get some help from them but they were long gone. She rushed back to the pile of rocks and continued to free the person trapped. She was finally able to see the face of the trapped person. She was in her late 20s. She remember seeing her on her way in. It finally hit Elaine that she needed to find her mother. She stared at her face for a minute. The tears coming to her eyes, she just wanted to find her mother. She was torn between wanting to find her mother and wanting to help this lady.
“What’s wrong?” the lady asked.
“I just want to find my mother. I should really be looking for her.”
“Please help me! I will help you find her once help me out.”
Elaine stood there for a second. Finally she decided to finish helping the lady so she could go back to looking for her mother. Another 30 minutes passed and the lady was finally free.
“Thank you. I am so grateful that you stayed and helped me.” She said with smile. “Now let’s go and find your mother.
Together they started to search for Elaine’s mom. Elaine was so happy she decided to stay and help the lady. Together they were able to rescue ten other persons including Elaine’s mother.
