Kevin listened quietly. I couldn't understand why he still seemed so stressed. I felt like I was breathing with both lungs for the first time in a year. All that frustration and anger and Internet research and begging to be heard-it had gradually formed a vise grip on the back on my neck, and in one cool rush of relief, I felt it let go. Everything the surgeon was saying made so much sense to me. I'd been so hungry for that clear explanation. A simple diagnosis. A plain path forward. Happily ever after.

"Our prayers have been answered!" I told Abbie and Adelynn on the phone.

I wasn't ready to hear that the answer was no.

Reality set in as the days in the hospital dragged on. I was eager for this nightmare to be over. I wanted us to get back to normal, and I had my fantasy definition of "normal" all figured out. Apparently, G.o.d did not get this memo.

Anna didn't get better. She got worse.

Once again, her little belly swelled, and she sank into a haze of sleepless pain, surviving on sips of liquid and IV fluids. She wanted to lie in bed and be left alone, but Kevin and I wheedled and nagged. We rousted her to her feet several times a day and marched her around the fourth floor of the hospital in an attempt to kick-start her digestive system. A few days after the surgery, Annabel suffered a pruritic reaction-an all-over skin-crawling itchiness-from the morphine, which then had to be taken away from her, and the painkillers she could still tolerate gave her very little relief.

That Sunday, March 9, 2008, the pediatric surgeon came by to check on Annabel. When I saw him in a dapper three-piece suit instead of the customary surgical scrubs, I smiled and said, "Well, good morning! You're in your Sunday go-to-meetin' clothes."

"I was in church this morning, and I couldn't stop thinking about Annabel," he said. "I thought I'd stop by for a minute and..."

His smile faded as he laid a practiced hand on her forehead. He summoned a nurse, who checked Anna's vitals. Her temperature had spiked to 102.7. She was in great pain, distended and pale, and when the surgeon palpated her tummy, she flinched in agony.

"Pinging," he said to Kevin, moving a stethoscope over Anna's midsection.

"What does that mean?" I whispered.

"When there's extra gas and no healthy gut sounds," Kevin said, "sometimes you hear pinging."

"And that means?"

"Something's wrong."

Her intestines were fully obstructed again, and would require surgery to open up her abdomen once more. Within minutes, the whole surgical ballet repeated itself. The anesthesiologist came to talk us through the surgery, and I was relieved when he gave Annabel the first component of the c.o.c.ktail that would step her down to unconsciousness. I leaned in close to nuzzle her ear, the way I used to nuzzle the precious little seash.e.l.l ears of all my baby girls, whispering that heartfelt prayer of blessing from the book of Numbers.

"The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make His face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you. The Lord lift up His countenance upon you... and give you peace."

Kevin kissed her cheek and whispered, "Bye, baby. See you soon."

As they wheeled her bed from the room, he took my hand. Sorrow poured from my heart like water from a breached levee, and I cried for a long, bitter while. Gathered in the waiting room was a heavenly host of prayer warriors, precious family and friends, beautiful souls who love Kevin and me like siblings and love our girls like their own.

My brother Greg and his wife, Jill, had been caring for Abigail and Adelynn at their house in Wichita Falls and had brought them to the hospital to be handed off to Nina, one of several great friends who took turns caring for the girls so Kevin and I could camp out in Annabel's hospital room. Kevin's sister, Corrie, was holding Adelynn (three years old at that time) when Dr. Scott Sharman, our pastor from Alsbury Baptist Church, walked in. When Adelynn saw him, she flashed a sunbeam smile, reached out her arms, and said, "I want G.o.d to hold me!"

We all burst out laughing. It was such a perfect moment. We all knew exactly what Adelynn was thinking; we talked every week about going to "G.o.d's house," and when we got there, right up front was this guy who seemed to be hosting the party, shaking hands at the door as people arrived and departed. Adelynn received that like a child and drew the logical conclusion. Now she needed to be held by this big someone who made her feel safe and loved.

I think everyone in the room could relate. We'd all been through so much by this time, Adelynn's frank little demand cracked us up and broke the tension, but as the laughter made us breathe, her words resonated like a bone-deep prayer: I want G.o.d to hold me. We laughed till we cried, and then we cried until we laughed again.

After what seemed like a thousand hours, Kevin and I were taken to meet with the surgeon in the same room where we'd met him nine days earlier. I remember thinking how easily we become creatures of habit. We sat in the same chairs, staring at the familiar white-on-white wallpaper, feeling the layers of bad news that had been spoken and heard under the generic artwork and anatomical diagrams.

The surgeon came in looking exhausted and grim.

"When organs and abdominal tissue stick together, adhesions-bands of fibrous tissue-sometimes form. We found severe interlooping adhesions... required extensive dissection to free..." After that, the words came and went in waves like an outgoing tide. "... separated and placed the intestine back in the abdomen... because there was no definitive cause for the second obstruction... continue to have adhesions... that she may not recover in a manner giving a strong quality of life."

"Wait-what?" I squeezed my eyes shut and opened them wide, trying to take it in. What he was saying. This thing he couldn't be telling me. "You're saying... this will keep happening for the rest of her life? You're saying that from now on... this is her life?"

"I'm saying we may have to continue to release the adhesions through surgery."

"But why is this happening?" I pressed him. "I don't understand what would cause something like this to happen."

"The gastroenterologist will be in to talk with you about it. If we're looking at a motility disorder, that can be very difficult to diagnose. The testing is invasive. You wouldn't want to put a kid through that unless you absolutely have to. Once it's diagnosed, it can be a lifelong battle."

Kevin asked the relevant clinical questions. The surgeon gave guarded clinical answers. I sat still, my mind reeling through the day-to-day realities beyond all that jargon. I saw the landscape of Annabel's life being razed before my eyes. The landscape of our own lives-Kevin's and mine. And Abigail's. And Adelynn's.

Our family had been torn apart. Abbie and Adelynn had been living out of their little backpacks for almost two weeks, chronic sleepover guests on a rotating schedule that now dropped off the edge of the calendar into an unknowable future. Kevin's partners at the veterinary clinic were amazingly supportive-never questioning that family comes first-but Kevin hated imposing on them week after week, month after month.

Year after year.

But all that shrank to a footnote; the shadow overwhelming everything was the suffering Annabel would have to endure. The invasive procedures. The scarring surgeries. The slow erosion of her goofy, shining spirit. It was wrong. Like trying to breathe water or swim through solid rock. Impossible and broken and wrong, wrong, wrong.

Kevin and I kept it together pretty well while talking with the surgeon and then allowed ourselves to be ushered to the surgical waiting area where our friends and family sat talking in low murmurs, gentle laughter, soft prayers. The men immediately stood and went to Kevin, and the women took me in like a warm patchwork quilt. Oh, I wanted G.o.d to hold me, and He sent His best possible emissaries. I started to tell them what the surgeon had told us, but as the words came out, they became as real as cinder blocks, and they were too heavy for me. My sweet sisters let me gasp and stammer through it, and then they let me cry.

With so many tubes and wires in and out of her body, Annabel looked like a little pink b.u.t.terfly in a spiderweb. A tube that traveled up her nose and down into her stomach provided suction for drainage. Rectal and urinary catheters performed the obvious functions. Two small tubes in her nostril pushed oxygen into her lungs as pneumonia threatened. A PICC line (an IV catheter that goes directly to the heart) was inserted just below Annabel's collarbone to deliver nutrients she couldn't get any other way. Her body blossomed with deep purple bruises as one vein after another was blown. Nutrient-providing IV fluids are thicker than saline, and the veins can take that for only so long. Anna hadn't eaten for fifteen days. Feeding her with IV fluids wasn't going to cut it for the long haul.

That's where we were then. The long haul.

Abbie was eight years old then: too small to understand, but big enough to do as she was asked-and we had to ask a lot of her. She became my right arm at home and Adelynn's second-string mommy when I wasn't around. She was also the spark of joy that kept us from getting morose, a little lighthouse who kept us oriented toward what childhood is supposed to be. She never saw or treated Anna like anything less than Anna. She prodded her sisters to play and giggle and be interested in having fun, and her endless imagination flew Anna away from unpleasant reality.

I recall one of the good days when Anna was feeling well enough to play and Abbie was able to nudge her outside for the afternoon. At suppertime, they came in, wonderfully sweaty and dirty, smelling like sunscreen and dry gra.s.s.

"Mommy," Annabel enthused, "Abbie and Adelynn and I played a game where we had to get to the top of this tree in order to save the world!"

"ABBIE, BREATHE WITH ME. In through the nose... out through the mouth..."

In the back of the CareFlite ground vehicle, I gripped Abbie's hand, keeping my voice low and warm, hating the moment of tough love that I knew was coming, hating all the tough-love moments that had already come and gone.

"Abigail, we can't do this right now," I said firmly. "We need to keep it together now. You've got to get ahold of yourself. If you can't breathe, they'll have to take you to the hospital, Abbie, and I can't go with you."

"I don't want to go." Hiccuppy sobs caught in her throat. Abbie knotted her fists in her lap. "I won't go. I have to be here for Anna when she comes out. I have to be here for Adelynn when you all go to the hospital. But I'm scared, Mommy. I'm so scared..."

"I know. I know, but-"

"You don't know," she choked through her tears. "You don't know."

"What don't I know? Tell me so I can understand."

"It's all my fault."

"No. It is not." I put my hands firmly on her shoulders and sat her up to face me. "Listen, sister. None of this-ever-has ever been your fault, not one bit of it. Why would you even think that?"

"Because I told her... I told her to get in there." Abbie pulled the mask away from her face, and the whole story came out in a guilty, breathless rush. "It started to crack, and I told her... I said I would get around her and go down the big tree, and then my weight would be off the branch, and she could cross over and go down the way she came up, and I thought it was only a little bit in there, like a foot or something, and I just needed her to step in there for a second so I could get around her, and she kept saying no, and I kept saying just go, and then she did, and she... she... she didn't want to do it, and I made her do it, Mommy. I made her get in, and it'll be my fault if she's-"

"Abbie, no. Abbie, listen to me. First of all, that was a great plan. That was a brilliant plan, and I love that you thought of it. Because you were looking out for her, like you always do. You had no way of knowing it was going to turn out like this. Abbie, sometimes, even if we try to do everything right-even when we do do everything right-sometimes things still turn out all wrong. And all we can do then is regroup. You gotta regroup now, Abbie. You need to let go of everything you can't control. Anything that's already happened, anything you're afraid might or might not happen-you can't control any of that. You can only control how you react to it. And how you're reacting right now, Abbie-I can't fix it for you. Only you can fix it. And you can, Abbie. You are a strong person, physically and emotionally and mentally. You can fix this."

Abbie nodded, trying to swallow, trying to stay with me.

"Anna is going to be okay." I made her look me in the eyes, and I made myself believe what I was saying. "G.o.d's hand is on her. No matter what. You know that, right?"

"But what if... what if she's not okay?"

"That's why I have to stay, Abbie. You understand that, don't you?"

She nodded again and pushed the heel of her hand across her cheek; she was still bleak but breathing somewhat evenly. In through her nose. Out through her mouth. I kissed her temple and took her hands between mine and asked her, "Will you pray with me?"

Abbie nodded. I touched my forehead to hers.

"Heavenly Father... please... we need your peace. And your strength. And your love. Please let your peace come over Abbie. Calm her heart, Lord, and her soul... and help her breathe. And help me... help me be... whatever I need to be now. And be with Anna. Please, keep her in your care and let her know she's not alone."

We sat still for a long moment. There was no sound but the thrumming heartbeat of the helicopter outside. After a while, Abbie put her arms around my neck, and I hugged her tight, willing her to know how I cherished her, not willing to be the first one to let go.

When she pulled away, I said, "Okay?"

Abbie said, "Okay."

And I knew she would be. But I also knew now that her life hung in the balance, too, her fate tied to Anna's in a way that none of us could truly understand. As we climbed out of the back of the ambulance, I silently said another prayer for both of them.

"ANNABEL."

"Yes?"

She's smart, my Annabel. I suspect she knew there was a moment of tough love coming.

"Anna, it is time for you to go back."

"I don't want to go. I want to stay with you."

"It's time for you to go, Annabel. The firemen are going to get you out, and when they do... Anna, you will be totally fine. There will be nothing wrong with you. My Holy Spirit will be with you. Don't be afraid. I'm sending my guardian angel to be with you."

Annabel received His promise like a child. On faith.

"Anna? Annabel..."

A faraway voice was calling her name.

"I'm a fireman. I came to get you. Can you hear me? Anna, can you answer me?"

She opened her eyes. The gold glory was gone. Annabel was alone in the darkness.

Chapter Six.

He reveals mysteries from the darkness And brings the deep darkness into light.

Job 12:22 IN THE BELLY OF the tree, Anna scrambled to her feet, trying to breathe, but the air was closed up and earthy. A tiny dot of light pierced the darkness above her, she told me later, and she thought it might be an open knot in the tree and that if she could reach it, she might be able to put her mouth to it and take a breath. A narrow ledge jutted about eight inches from the wall just above her head.

"Like if I were right here," she said, outlining a spot on the rug, "there would be this ledge inside the tree, like here." She held her hand flat just above her forehead. "And I tried to get up on it, because I thought if I could get up there, maybe I could find a way out. But it was really small and hard to get up there. Slippery. Because everything was all muddy."

It was observed in the ER later that her nails were embedded with moss and dirt from her clawing effort to climb onto that ledge.

"I bet that was scary," the nurse said, but Anna just smiled.

"It was dark," she told me the next day, "but Jesus sent an angel. So once I came back, I could see inside the tree."

Once I came back, she said, as matter-of-factly as she would refer to hopping off the school bus at our gravel drive.

The angel wasn't what Anna expected an angel to be.

"She looked more like... like a fairy, I guess. And then she got more and more clear, and then it was like-Mommy, G.o.d winked at me through the body of the angel. And I knew He was saying to me, I'm going to leave you now and everything's going to be okay. And then the angel got, like, solid again, and she stayed with me the whole rest of the time. She shined a light so I could see the inside of the tree where I was. I could see the walls then, and they were like this..."

Here Anna made a motion with her hands, showing me the tree's mysterious inner world, which I eventually saw for myself after Kevin climbed up there on a sunny day with a light and a camera. The inside of the tree is actually quite beautiful; the soaring walls are marbled and muscled, flowing with shades of ebony and mahogany and ghostly white.

"The feel of it was hard and smooth but scratchy in parts," said Anna. "Like soft, but then hard. Like firewood that's been split. And the floor was just kind of muddy."

On the ground, half hidden by mud and roots, was the headlamp Abbie had dropped down to her two hours earlier. Annabel sat down and fiddled with it for a while but couldn't figure out how to make it work. And that was okay, she said. She didn't need it. They just sat quietly together, Anna and her angel, surrounded by a halo of silent light.

"And that's how I was able to grab the rope," Anna said. "The only way I could get ahold of it was because my guardian angel shined her light on it."

I'D RESUMED MY POST below the grotto. Kevin remained on the move, checking in with members of the team, coming by every once in a while to grip my hand. Abbie stood nearby, one protective arm around Adelynn's shoulders. Two of the rescue workers still on the ground had given Abbie and Adelynn their coats, a small gesture that meant a lot as the night air cooled enough for us to see our breath when we prayed.

The plan for getting Anna out safely-an engineering feat that involved ropes, ladders, pulleys, and a lot of patient expertise-evolved as a coordinated effort between crew members on the ground and on the ladders with Kevin somewhere in the middle of it all. Problems were a.n.a.lyzed and solved as they rose to the surface.

First, they came up with a little harness they hoped she'd be able to tie herself into. It was like the seat of a baby swing, essentially, fashioned from thick but pliable rope that would hold her weight but wouldn't hang up on the jagged ridges and outcroppings inside the tree. Then the crumbling lower lip of the opening had to be taken into consideration. If it broke away, the shards would rain down on Anna's head. If it cut into the rope as they hauled her up, it could fray and break when she was high enough to be even more seriously injured than she already was. Not knowing the extent of her injuries, they had to be painstakingly slow as they brought her up; it was imperative that there be no jolting movements to her neck and spine, no quick upward lurches that might crack her head on the irregular walls.

"The real problem is when we get her up to the top," I heard someone telling Kevin. "We can't just drag her over the ledge. We need to establish a second point of contact so we can take her all the way up and then swing her out."

They would need a taller ladder, they realized, along with another pulley.

It's funny how G.o.d sometimes hears our prayers before we even know what we're supposed to pray for. As the Briaroaks crew prepared to drop the harness down to Anna, a call came in from the dispatcher. Another agency had dispatched the Cleburne Fire Department by mistake about twenty minutes earlier. The Cleburne engine was halfway to our place now, and they were on the radio, asking if they should turn around and go back or continue on over, just in case we needed a few extra hands. They had a forty-five-foot ladder and pulley system on board.

Bryan relayed the news up the ladder to Mike and Tristan and told the dispatcher, "Tell them to come on over. We're ready to start bringing her up."

High above our heads, Mike kept calling Anna's name. "Annabel? Anna, if you can hear me, say h.e.l.lo. Can you say h.e.l.lo for me, Anna? Anna, we're gonna get you out of there, all right? And your mom and dad are right here. We're all right here, Anna. You don't have to be scared."

She never looked up or called out to them.

"We're lowering the harness anyway," Bryan told us.

There was nothing else to do at that point but hope that Anna would be able to do what they needed her to do.