Die trying.
It was getting hard to think. Advanced hypothermia.
So quiet now, the red sky above, the frigid water all around.
The cold didn’t hurt so much.
The car’s headlights were still on. Jack wasn’t sure why.
A deep breath, a hard exhale, a deeper breath, and he was under again, swimming as hard as he could and still too slowly.
The car rested on the driver’s side on the bottom of the lake. Ten feet deep, give or take. A fish swam in front of the headlights, then was gone into the darkness.
Jack tried to open the passenger door, but it was locked or jammed. But the window was smashed. The dashboard was still lit up. The clock said 4:41.
He reached in for the driver, who looked oddly peaceful, arms drifting, hair waving in the current. Eyes closed. Almost certainly dead. Not wearing a seat belt, a huge gash visible on his forehead, black against the white of his skin, blood trickling up in a dark, lazy swirl.
No bubbles, meaning he wasn’t breathing.
Jack reached for the boy’s arm and pulled.
The kid didn’t budge.
Soon Jack would have to surface again or die down here. Which maybe wouldn’t be so bad. Nice that he could see. Deep blue all around.
He pulled again. A little movement now, but Jack’s chest was working, wanting to breathe, and if he didn’t go up now, now, he’d drown, navy or no navy.
His niece was eighteen, too.
He’d want someone to try one more time for Abby.
He pulled as hard as he could, bracing his legs against the car, all the air in his lungs leaving in a bubbling rush.
And then they were moving, heading up, and how they were doing it, Jack didn’t know because he couldn’t think anymore, but they were making it, a centimeter at a time, and then there was the sky, red and purple and violently beautiful, and full of air, like icy needles in his lungs, but so, so good, the sound of his gasps tearing through the cold.
His gasps. Not the kid’s.
He held on to the boy and tried to keep going. It wasn’t pretty. It was hard and sloppy and weak.
A siren screamed, then another. Police and firefighters, on their way.
The dock was still so far away. Jack closed his eyes, his head slipping again under the water. Shit. Kicked harder, his legs really just flailing now.
The boy was still and quiet. No breath, no coughing. No resistance.
Jack’s labored panting rasped in and out of his aching lungs.
The water splashed, over and over, a hopeless, wet sound as his arm smacked lifelessly in a sorry imitation of swimming. He held on to the boy with his other arm, and God, it was hard.
Still not there. Still not there. In between each stroke, Jack’s face dipped a little lower in the water. He choked on some water.
Still not there.
Then someone grabbed his arm. Sam Miller, clinging to the dock ladder, reaching out for him. God bless Sam Miller.
The other boys reached down and grabbed on to their unconscious (dead) friend, hauling him up the ladder, ice in their hair now. One of the boys was sobbing.
Sam reached down for Jack, pulling him up, which was good because Jack was not going to be able to make it out himself. Water streamed off him, and he fell onto his knees. “On his side,” he managed, and they obeyed, turning the limp boy onto his left.
“Oh, shit, Josh,” the sobbing boy said. “Josh, please.”
Josh. Right. Josh Deiner. A troublemaker.
It was now too dark to see if any water had come out of Josh’s mouth, up from his lungs. Jack pushed him on his back and started chest compressions. He couldn’t feel his hands, but this was a brutish job, just push, push, push, elbows locked, fast and hard.
The sirens were louder.
Sam breathed into Josh’s mouth.
One...two...three...four...five...
God, he was tired.
And then there were red-and-blue flashes, and footsteps thudded down the dock.
“Jack, we got this,” said a voice. Levi. Emmaline Neal was there, too, another cop, a good hockey player. They knelt down and took over compressions.
There was a clattering, and Jessica Dunn and Gerard Chartier were running with the stretcher.
“Dry him off!” someone ordered. “He has to be dry if we’re gonna shock him.”
There was a whole crowd now. The three boys were being wrapped in blankets and hustled away, their faces white in the gloom.
The sun was still setting. How could that be? It seemed as though hours had passed.
Someone put a blanket around Jack, too, then led him down the dock, arm around his waist, holding him when he staggered. The three boys climbed into the back of one of the town’s two ambulances.
The other would be for Josh.
“Let’s get you out of the cold,” said the person at his side. It was Emmaline. Huh. He thought she was back with Josh. She opened the door of her cruiser and gently pushed him in.
“Is he dead?” Jack asked.
She glanced down the dock. “He’s not dead till he’s warm and dead. You know that. Let’s worry about you right now, okay?”
She was about to close the door when Sam Miller came over. His face was ruddy now—he was warming up. “You saved us,” he said, his voice cracking. “You saved us all.”
But Jack hadn’t, because Josh Deiner’s body was still on the dock, Levi and Gerard on their knees next to him as if in prayer.
* * *
THE MEDIA CALLED IT the Midwinter Miracle, going for alliteration over accuracy. And for a few days, it was big news. Anderson Cooper, among others, came to town and interviewed the three boys—Sam Miller, Garrett Baines and Nick Bankowski, who were tremulous and fine, save for a broken nose on Nick. Their parents wept and called Jack a hero, an angel, the hand of God. A former navy SEAL was interviewed and attested that it was a “helluva rescue.”
As police spokesperson, Levi gave a statement, as well, and when Anderson asked if Jack was indeed his brother-in-law, Levi said, yes, he was. When asked to characterize Jack, Levi said, “He’s a good guy.” That was it, and Jack was grateful.
He himself was asked for interviews by fifty-seven media outlets. He didn’t give any.
That night in the
