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long black hair was slippery with perspiration, and that the water my dad had sponged over her steamed into a stinky mist. I picked bed bugs from her face, squeezing them to their death before they could get to her mouth. Meanwhile, my dad paced furiously and cursed loudly as he’d tried to figure out how to handle our predicament.
    “Blakie,” he said finally, bowing his head in defeat. “I need you to go get Doc Daryn.” It took a lot for my dad to admit he needed help. He looked more exhausted than usual. I could tell because his hazel eyes usually sparkled, but looked cloudy and dull. I wondered if he had dared to swim in the ocean or if his bushy brown hair and beard were wet from sweat.  
    “But Daddy,” I said. “Sun’s out.” I knew the way to Doc’s, but had never attempted it without my parents or during the heat of the midday sun. The thought of the ascent up the rope ladders alone scared the crap out of me.
    “You’re big now. You can do it. I have to stay with your mom and we need Doc to help your mommy with the baby,” he said. My mom pulled me closer to her, knowing the risk of me never returning to be high. But after my dad whispered something in her ear she’d reached over to retrieve a rare piece of cloth she’d been saving for the baby and wrapped it around my head.  
    “This will protect you,” she said, kissing my forehead. I nodded, believing her words because the alternative was unthinkable. My oversized shoes couldn’t be used on the ropes, but my long sleeves and pants would cover my body. Only my hands and feet would be exposed. “I love you, little one.”
    “I love you too, Mama. I’ll get Doc Daryn, don’t worry,” I’d said.
    “Be careful and be fast, my good boy,” my dad encouraged. He draped a satchel of water over my shoulder before lifting my small body onto the ropes directly outside our cave. I choked on the heat, but spray from the waves below cooled me and gave me courage to press upward.  
    I’d climbed as fast as my tiny muscles could, the ropes and sun singeing my hands and feet. My dad told me later I’d ascended more than two hundred feet to reach the top of the cliffs. The one time I glanced down and saw the dizzying distance between me and the rocky shore of the ocean below, I lost my footing. As I hung by one hand from the ropes, something kept me from releasing my grip. Whether it was love for my mother and baby sister, survival instinct, divine intervention, or the wind, I somehow swung my feet back towards the cliffs, looped them into a rung, and grabbed hold of the ropes with my other hand. The contact ripped open the blisters on my hands and watery fluid and blood dripped downward, but I kept going with renewed energy and focus.  
    Once atop the cliffs, I’d collapsed from exhaustion face down into the dirt and rocks, making myself an instant target for fire ants. After several minutes of being stung, inhaling dust into my lungs and coughing it back up, I remembered my water satchel and thirstily drained it. I rose, batting away the ants, and ran as fast as I could across the rocky path towards the canyon. The ground was hot as coals on my feet, my back ablaze from the sun. Then it had been down another ladder and across a thin ledge to the doctor’s comparatively lush accommodations in the canyon.
    “Doc Daryn,” I’d yelled. “My mama’s having the baby. She needs help!” Doc’s Cleave, Linda, snatched me from the ledge, letting out a cry at the sight of me. The Doc knew it must have been bad for my dad to have sent me and quickly gathered his supply bag, tying it around his waist. He tried to leave me with his Cleave, but I’d kept screaming that I wanted my mama and daddy, so he’d slathered an ointment on my hands and feet before wrapping them with gauze. A minty cream I recognized as toothpaste—a rarity in our community—was caked on my face in effort to ease the burning sensation and swelling from the ant stings. At his