The water seeped into his nose and into his mouth, and dribbled into his lungs, and blossoming within him was a powerful sensation, perhaps the most powerful sensation the human body can know, that of asphyxiation. He was drowning. He could not get air. He thought of his uncle Jimmy, dying of emphysema, sitting in a chair with oxygen flowing into his nostrils through those clear plastic nasal prongs, the tank of O2 accompanying him everywhere, the way his yellow Labrador once did. He fantasized kicking free with powerful thrusts, kicking himself to the river’s surface. Then he tried to imagine himself breathing good clean air, imagined jogging around the cinder track at his high school in West Lafayette, Indiana, though when he did, he found he was only inhaling water faster. Air spilled from his nose and mouth in a pulsing current of bubbles.

And the agony of breathlessness only increased.

The pressure on his eardrums—he was deep, deep—became excruciating, adding a foundation to the horrible sense of suffocation. It meant something, though. It meant he was not yet dead. Death was not painful. What he was feeling was life’s final blow, its farewell pangs, its desperate struggle not to leave.

He wanted to thrash, to flail, to lash out. In his mind, his hands began to churn the water: but only in his mind. His extremities twitched feebly, that was all.

He recalled what the man had said, and some things became all too obvious. Guard your passenger with your life: a nonissue now. When the car was dredged out, they would both be dead. Both drowned. One driver, stunned by the impact, drowned in his seat. One passenger the victim of security precautions. The only question would be why Callahan had driven over the bridge.

But it was wet, the pavement was slippery, and Callahan was given to pushing the speed limit, wasn’t he?

Oh, they’d blame the peon, all right.