Stopped
breathing. Just like that.
The ocean had been cold. Much colder than I'd expected from a warm
Spring day. It was early in the beach season. The winter had been
harsh. Cold currents still flowed past the shore where my parents had
dragged all of us kids. Normally, in Summer, they dragged us out of
our comfortable beds early on a gray Baltimore morning, drove us
across the Bay Bridge and down to Ocean City on Maryland's coast. I
had no idea there was another Ocean City in New Jersey, and I have no
memory of why we went there this time. Me and my
brother John had run into
the waves, let them knock us over, felt the water churning and
rolling over our heads. We never tried to swim in the crashing surf,
just dived under the waves and tried to touch bottom. Felt the
undertow trying to drag us out to sea. Tried to body surf our way
back to the beach. That was our relationship with the ocean. The
younger kids were still too young to play in the surf like that. They
were walking along the sand, sticking their feet in the frigid water
and running away from the incoming waves.
Me and John
were the oldest. We did
what we wanted, sometimes. We were always together: serving mass as
altar boys, in the boy scouts, riding our bikes miles away from home,
sledding down the steep city streets in winter, building a tree
house, or carrying paper bags full of groceries home from the store
down the road.
Sometimes,
when fighting the wild
bucking waves and swift undercurrent, I'd do my best to stay under
water as long as possible. John and I were pretty good at holding our
breath. I always hoped to see fish, crabs or starfish on the ocean
bottom. I was always digging in it, hoping to find something.
I came up
after a long dive and
didn't see John anywhere. No big deal. He'd probably gone in. I was
cold anyway. Even my frenetic play hadn't warmed me up all that much.
I headed along the warm dry sand towards my father. I still didn't
see John anywhere. I knew Dad would know where he was. As I got
closer to him, I felt funny. My skin had instantly started to warm
under the 75 degree sun, but I felt like I had a fever. My breath
became ragged, uncertain. I called out to him, and sped up. I saw him
turn his head towards me, and that was all.
I awoke on
my back, but my hair was
full of sand. A crowd encircled me. "What happened?" I
heard a voice ask. I wanted to know that myself. Another disembodied
voice in the crowd answered, "I think some old man drowned." Old man?
At 14, I could hardly look old. My dad was there too,
looking down at me. He picked me up. I could barely breathe. I tried
to tell that to my dad, but the words got stuck on the way out. In a
few minutes a beach jeep pulled up, and hands grabbed me, loaded me
into the jeep. It flew along the sand, bouncing and twisting. Suddenly
we were off the beach, on a street. An ambulance waited. I
was lifted onto a gurney and hustled through its open doors. A mask
was pushed onto my face. Oxygen poured into my nose and mouth. It
felt good. I didn't notice anything else, but I wondered where John
and my parents were. I was little scared, but it wasn’t my
first trip in an ambulance. I felt sleepy.
Next thing
I knew, the gurney was
being rolled across the asphalt, through the sliding glass doors of a
medical clinic, into a curtained-off room. "I'm cold," I
remember saying. It was warm in the room; my parents were there in
swimsuits. I shivered in all that heat. A thick wool blanket was
dropped over me. I shook, trembling uncontrollably. I couldn't warm
up. "I'm still cold," I said, when the oxygen mask was
removed again. The thick air smelled of ocean, salty and fishy in my
nose. Another heavy, dark green blanket was draped over me. My
parents stared. The medical staff stared. I still shivered, amazed
that I could be so cold, warm as the day was, and covered in heavy
blankets. I felt like a freak. Well, I was, I guess. Someone looking
like a doctor kept asking me how I felt. “Just cold,” was
all I said. The oxygen, removed for that response, was replaced. The
blankets were down, my chest examined with a stethoscope, my pulse
taken.
The doctor
spoke with my parents. I
heard him ask questions about my health and my medical history. Lung
problems? Pneumonia? Oh yeah, several times. I continued shaking. I
looked at my parents. Their eyes held concern, but they were as
mystified as I was. I enjoyed the oxygen. My shivering slowed down. I
felt warmer inside. I think I was given a shot of something, possibly
an antihistamine. As a younger child, I was always getting shots, so
that felt normal. Suddenly I opened my eyes, unaware until then that
I had closed them. The blankets were removed. The oxygen mask was
gone. My parents handed my clothes to me. As soon as I pulled my
pants and t-shirt on, we left. I heard my parents thanking the
medical staff.
Turns out
my rare allergy to cold had
been my nemesis. In recent years, after playing for hours in the
snow, as usual in winter, I would head into our warm house. But
instead of slowly warming up, I had felt like I was sunburned, and
developed swollen hands, fingers that wouldn't bend, and red swollen
blotches on my face. But this was summer! Somehow, the cold ocean
currents had swollen the muscles in my throat, which tightened around
my windpipe, cutting off my air. I remember being surrounded by all
the other kids in the station wagon, including John, next to me as
always. Freaks need their families.
