On the shore, two figures ran toward the water. She heard a splash, then saw arms cutting through the water. They heard me, she thought. She turned to her father, “They heard me,” she told him.

The swimmers found a way through the kelp. Reaching her, the first one took a look at Ben and took him, gently but firmly, from Caddie’s hold. “What happened?” he asked, pulling off a glove and pressing his fingers against her father’s neck.

“We came up too fast,” she said. “He was fine, and then he passed out.”

“You’re okay?” the second swimmer asked her.

Caddie nodded. “Is he breathing?” she asked.

“He is,” the first man said, “but we need to get him in.” He turned to the second man. “Is Jim calling the paramedics?”

The second man nodded. “They should be on their way,” he said, speaking to Caddie.

The two men began swimming back toward shore, the first on his back and holding her father’s tank by the valve, the second pushing from the front, her father’s feet resting on his shoulders. The second man pulled her father’s fins off while they swam and tossed them aside.

Caddie tried to keep up but soon fell a little behind. She came to her father’s fins and picked them up. Farther on, she came across his BC, inflated and floating like some odd, dead sea creature, the various hoses dangling, tentacle-like, beneath it. The rescuers, she guessed, were stripping him of his gear to make it easier to get him to shore. She hooked her arm through the shoulder strap and dragged the BC and tank beside her, not wanting to let it go.

By the time she neared shore, she was exhausted. She floated in the water, watching the men carry her father out. The waves made it difficult for them, and twice they dropped him before a third man on shore came to their assistance and helped drag her father’s limp body out of the reach of the water.

She fought to get through the surf. The shore, only a dozen feet away, was so close she could see the sand—the monster berries, she thought vaguely—rolling into the water. But try as she might, she couldn’t reach it. She tried to stand, but there was nothing beneath her feet.

“Please,” she called out over the crashing of the waves. She didn’t want to yell for help, for fear they would leave her father to come to her aid. I’d rather drown, she thought. I’d rather it was me.