To Live And Die In Paradise Pt.3

I’ve always known that a drowning man will pull down their rescuer to save themselves.

I understand it, that final animalistic will to live overriding everything else. At the time there is only that moment – survival or death. Guilt and judgement can come later, and from the safety of shore. But what I never truly understood, until this point, was the sheer strength of a body fueled by that potent mixture of fear and adrenaline.

With a towering wave rising unseen behind him he thrust out his hand, searching desperately in my direction for something solid, something to buy just a moments rest. When the wave swallowed him up it brought him smashing into me and instantly his strong hands were around my neck, scraping and scrambling to get above water before the next wave hit.

I gasped, choking for air and tried to think of a plan.

“I am dying!” He screamed. His English amazingly clear despite the gargle of seawater.

“I cannot swim!”

My rage at this statement almost cost me a breath and drowned me on the spot. Only the confidence of youth would make this a good place to learn.

“It’s OK, hold my hand and kick!”

“I cannot. My heart.” He whimpered, seeming ruined by the effort he had already endured to stay afloat to this point.

Holding out my right arm he instantly latched on and I began an awkward side-stroke towards the beach.

He felt leaden in my hands, as if he was being held fast by some unseen force. Realizing his billowing shirt, the kind a chubby kid wears when uncomfortable at the beach, was simply acting as a sea anchor I ripped it up and over his head and threw it aside.

Moving still at barely a crawl we approached the wall of breaking waves that separated us by sight from the beach. I didn’t know it at the time, but the swells the size of a double-decker bus obscured a crowd of frantic friends, family, and passerby that had gathered well into the hundreds.

As the breakers truly began to smash into us, far worse than they had yet, the fear seemed to take tighter hold and with each wave and fight for breath he would scramble further and further up my arm.

As I slipped lower and lower into the sea he would cling finally to my neck, tearing at my skin, choking me, forcing me to break away violently in that moment of personal panic. 

The look on his face in that second will haunt me for years. It read like a book. He could sense my rising fear. I was no savior, I had simply put myself in the same foolish position as him and was now unsure as to whether either of us would survive it. The look is his eyes begged – dont leave me. 

Wanting desperately to advance him forward like some human football I resorted to dropping below him when, panicked, he began to force me under.

From beneath I could grab him by the armpits and heave him over my head as hard as I could. If I timed it right, with the wave, he seemed to advance a few feet. If I timed it wrong, when feeling me release him from beneath he would become hysterical – turning around instantly and pulling himself back to me, completely undoing any gains.

This cycle repeated itself nightmarishly. Sluggish, seeming to have no end. Minutes felt like days, and every mis-timed breath or shout of encouragement seemed to force more and more water down my throat.

It’s paralyzing effect hit both of us. The salt choking and sputtering our few terse words to each other and producing such terrible fear as I’d previously thought unimaginable – closing the airway completely.

“You’ve got to kick!” I screamed, once I had barely regained my voice.

“I cannot. My heart.”

“You have to or we will both die here! I cannot get you out alone, you must kick!” And with that, I reached out my arm once more.

He took it just as another wave rolled over us – his grip on me fading with every minute.

In the great valleys between the crashing waves the sea was nearly flat, almost peaceful. The white layered foam looking like the world’s greatest bubble bath. The feeling of panic slowly melting into tired detachment the longer and longer out of view of dry land. It would be so easy to just let go, slip beneath and be done with it.

His screams snap me back to reality. Swallowing some seawater he begins to spasm and gurgle, violently coughing up thick foam only to swallow more when the next wave hits. His fingers tear into me, as close to a ‘death grip’ as I can imagine, and he begins another panicked climb over my head, gasping desperately for a clean breath of air.

As I am forced under once more I heave him barely another foot before feeling the all strength drain from me. Absolute exhaustion is setting in, and the nausea brought on by the end over end spiral of pushing, pulling and throwing has me on the edge of vomiting.

Tearing free I clamor to the surface to steady myself. Hoping to see land, hoping to see other rescuers, praying even for a drunk Russian on a jetski – anything. Yet there is nothing, and no one. Simply an endless desert of rolling white.

The nightmare scenario of being held in place, mired in sludge while some unknown terror advances. No matter how hard you fight you never seem to get away. My terror was known, it was constant – the line of waves, stacked one on top of another like a column of advancing soldiers stretching off to the horizon – never ending.

It was at this point the depression began to set in. I had failed. I would not be the hee-ro. I would either die here alone or die here with the boy. The idea itself seemed to have weight and I sank deeper with just it’s thought.

The mental image of the drowned Lithuanian man, gray and lifeless, being picked at by crabs, juxtaposed with the image of home – safety, comfort, wrapping up snugly in blankets with Cassie while our tiny thatch bungalow is whipped by rainstorms. The reasons to live. They brought me kicking back to the surface.

The will to survive is a powerful thing. It can be pulled out of you by circumstance but in the end it seems that those that have a reason to hold on often do.

Summoning what are left of my aching muscles I once more hold out my arm, screaming for him to kick.

Inching forward. The same cycle, same mad scramble of being eventually pulled under, except this time when I sank below him, dropping deep to avoid his grasp and throw him from his waist, the tips of my toes ever so slightly grazed the soft sand of the bottom. Elated, I shot for the surface, grabbing him by the hand. We might make it.

“We’re almost there! Kick! Kick!” I screamed right into his ear.

The sandbar I had touched gently started to rise beneath me and my spirits soared only to be crushed as the following swell sucked him back out. The painfully close seafloor was still not enough to gain a footing to grab him, and the curve of the sandbar meant the waves broke most intensely at this final spot.

Three times I made the terrible decision to step back off the sandbar to grab him as the waves pulled him close, but each time I got hold of him the resulting swell simply sucked us back out further. Having given his last to get this far, the look in his eyes said he was done. There was simply nothing left.

I grabbed at him, twisting, shouting, crying, screaming – anything to get him to move with me. Just a few more feet.

To Be Concluded…