Final Panic

13

It was almost a full minute before Jim got a grip on himself. The pain was still there. Throbbing. But it wasn’t as all-encompassing and overpowering as it had been.

He was still sinking.

The water was cold and dark.

He fought against the pain and moved his left foot first.

Then his right.

Now his arms.

He kicked with his feet and churned with his arms.

He was rising, rising towards the surface of the lake.

The air had been knocked out of his lungs when the paddle had hit him.

But he was going to make it to the surface before he suffocated.

He knew he could do it.

He didn’t know how or why.

Or why he was continuing. It was if there was some resolve burning deep down inside him that couldn’t be snuffed out no matter what his body went through.

Jim felt the burning in his chest. It was intolerably painful.

He knew he didn’t have much longer.

He had to reach the surface soon. His lungs needed air. His body needed oxygen.

Jim had read about what it felt like to drown. They’d been horrible descriptions that were painful to read. But at the time he’d read them, they’d just been mere words on a page. Black and white text. Nothing more. No reality to them.

What he’d read had said that the body knows not to breathe underwater. The reflexes are so strong that a drowning person won’t automatically take a breath until right before they’re about to fall unconscious.

Knowing this, Jim was watchful for his own reflexes.

He felt it starting. He felt the yearning in his lungs and his throat and his mouth. He felt his body wanting to open his mouth.

But his mind knew that it was just water he’d be taking in, that he’d just die sooner.

The fact that the yearning was coming on now meant he wasn’t far from drowning.

He was kicking with everything he had. Pulling with his arms.

His muscles burned with an intensity he’d never felt before.

Suddenly, it was over.

All over.

His hand punched through the surface of the water. He felt the air on his hand before his mouth reached it.

His head broke through the surface. His mouth was already opening reflexively, water pouring into it.

He gasped and sputtered.

He tasted the air pouring in.

There wasn’t any time to think about whether he was about to be shot. Whether Andy was there in his boat, waiting for him to reappear.

If he was shot, he was shot. And that was it. His body was on the edge of death.

It wasn’t just that he couldn’t think about getting shot. It was that there was simply nothing that he could do about it.

Jim’s muscles continued to burn. The pain wouldn’t leave them as he tread water.

The seconds passed slowly. They turned into minutes.

Time was moving as slow as molasses.

As the minutes passed, Jim slowly started to feel calmer. His mind was no longer ringing like an alarm, sending him every signal it could to tell him he was almost at the point of death.

His heart rate slowed.

His muscles were still exhausted.

He was freezing cold.

But he was alive.

He could breathe. There was oxygen in his blood and his brain.

And he hadn’t been shot.

Jim had to force himself to take stock of his surroundings, to scan the water around him.

The boat was gone.

And he couldn’t see the shore.

His head still throbbed in pain from the blow.

Jim reached for his Ruger instinctively, checking to see if it was there.

It wasn’t.

But it had to be there.

His holster was a good one.

Jim reached again, felt around, mental alarms going wild.

It was definitely gone, probably resting now on the bottom of the lake. Completely irretrievable.

Jim took a deep breath, trying to calm his panicking mind.

Panic wasn’t bad in and of itself.

You just had to know what to do with it.

Jim knew he couldn’t let it overtake him.

He couldn’t let himself become mentally defeated.

He knew he had to go on.

They desperately needed what Andy had stolen.

And Jim wasn’t about to give up.

He could deal with extreme exhaustion. He could deal with a blow to the head.

He’d figure out a way to deal without his sidearm. He’d improvise. On the shore, there’d be all sorts of things that could become weapons. It was just a matter of using them correctly.

Now all he had to do was find the shore.

If he couldn’t see it, he’d have to guess and just start swimming.

There was always a way forward. Always a path to survival.

It was just a matter of keeping the mind strong, fortified against self-doubt and weakness of all types.