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…

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!”