The Value of One Life

I haven’t posted in a long time. There are days when I feel pretty worthless, and sometimes those days string together until everything I touch feels empty and valueless. I fall into self-pity. I dwell on love I’ve lost or never had, on misty dreams burned away by the uncompromising light of reality, on all the ways and times I have fallen short. My failures rise to the surface like an oil leak from a long sunken hulk. Slowly, imperceptibly, a pall settles over me. I can’t write. I can’t see why I should write. In my worst moments, I feel my life hasn’t amounted to much and never will. But one thing I can’t diminish or dismiss, cannot minimize or forget, is that I saved a man’s life once.

I was on a boat with several friends, a big charter yacht. There were four women and five men. Three of the other men were friends of mine and one a friend of a friend whom I had just met. We cruised out to the Gulf Stream from Key Largo, far out of sight of land, and anchored in about 90 feet of clear water. My three friends donned scuba gear and went spear fishing for our dinner. There were only three sets of scuba gear aboard, so I stayed on deck with the new guy. All the women went to the foredeck to lay in the sun and tan. The man I had just met—and I don’t even remember his name—decided to go snorkeling. I told him that in 90 feet of water, with no reefs around, there was nothing to see. I told him the current was pretty strong. It had pulled the boat taught on the anchor line. The divers used the anchor line to haul themselves to the bottom, where the current was slower. He had no experience away from a beach and ignored me.

I worked for a while in a scuba shop, taught scuba diving, and worked as a dive master on many group dives. I had been trained to look for trouble and the signs of trouble. A big red flag is when someone surfaces with their mask on top of their head and no regulator or snorkel in their mouth.

I watched the guy I had just met dive next to the boat. He came up twenty yards astern. He dove again, surfacing farther away. On his third or fourth dive, he came up fifty or more yards from the boat and began trying to swim back. The current was far stronger than he imagined. He swam in place and went under. When he came up, his mask was on his forehead, snorkel lost, and he gasped, unable to yell or talk. He stopped swimming and began to drift farther away with the current.

I was taught that all cushions on a boat have to be floatation devices. I ran to the foredeck, where one of the women lay on a bench with her head resting on a large, round cushion. I jerked it out from under her head to curses and ran down the gunwale walkway. I gave the cushion the heave of my life, for the guy was far off, now. It skipped on the water once, twice, and hit him right in the face. He grabbed the cushion like the drowning man he was. Nearby, down-current from him, was a channel marker buoy. I yelled at him to swim to it, as the current would help, rather than hinder him. He gathered his strength and did so. He clung to the buoy, letting the cushion drift off. It disappeared in the chop in just a minute or so, going north with the Gulf Stream.

When my friends came up from spear fishing a few minutes later, we quickly got the anchor up and drew along side him. He was cold and shaken, but all right when we pulled him aboard.

At my worst times, I remember that had I not been there, knowing what I knew, doing what only I could do in that instant, a man would have died. Waiting a few minutes for my friends to come up would have had him a mile from us, lost in the chop or already drowned. I mattered more than anything in the world to one man, for one moment.

So what? Doctors, EMT’s, Navy corpsmen, firefighters and many others do it every day, all over the world. Some have saved thousands. It does not make me special or particularly important in any way. Except to that one guy. And I try not to think about it much, because it feels inappropriate, like bragging, even to myself. I’ve told a few people, I think. And these days, if that guy is still alive, I’d bet he thinks about it less often than I do. But that few seconds of my life are at times as much a lifeline for me as I threw to him. When I remember it, I don’t feel as worthless, as helpless, as doomed to fail. I wish I remembered that guy’s name. I’d like to call him and thank him. I saved him once, but he has saved me many times over.