When next I opened my eyes it was to hellish pain, a veterinarian’s needle, and the frightening face of my rescuer and best friend’s father, Alban MacDonald. At the time Alban served as water bailiff, and it was lucky for me that the man I disrespectfully called “the Crabbit” had happened upon the scene to rescue my sorry, pulseless arse.

When my mother learned what had happened (the Crabbit and the vet claimed I had become entangled in barbed wire and thus the bloody markings), she saw to my recovery, divorced my no-good father, and moved us to the good ole U.S. of A.

America: land of the free, home of the brave—only I was neither free nor brave. In an attempt to escape the mental abuse associated with my drowning, my traumatized brain had compartmentalized and isolated the incident. Buried in denial, the unfiltered memory remained dormant, waiting for just the right moment to return.

That moment occurred fourteen years later.

By the age of twenty-five, I had earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Princeton and a doctorate from Scripps, and my research into deep-sea acoustic lures had been featured in several prominent journals. As a budding “Jacques Cousteau,” I had been asked to lead a National Geographic-sponsored expedition to the Sargasso Sea, in search of the elusive giant squid. To attract the legendary colossus, our three-man submersible was armed with a lure I had designed, that emulated the sounds and vibrations of salmon.

We descended into the blackness of the depths and waited, our patience rewarded with what would be the first visual documentation of Architeuthis dux—the giant squid. Unfortunately, the lure summoned not only a hungry squid but a swarm of unexpected and unknown predatory fish. The squid panicked and tore loose our ballast tank, sending us spiraling into oblivion. The acrylic cockpit cracked and threatened to implode as we waited desperately for a drone to secure a towline. The underwater robot finally reached us in four thousand feet of water.

It seemed we had been spared a horrible death, but as the surface ship drew us out of the depths, the crack in the bubble cockpit continued to spiderweb until the sea burst in on us—233 feet below the surface. The sea rushed in and killed the pilot. Dragging the cameraman from the sinking sub, I kicked for the surface… and drowned again.

This time when I came to, I was in a hospital bed. My colleague, David Caldwell, conveniently blamed me for the pilot’s death and for the loss of the submersible. Fired from my teaching position at Florida Atlantic University, I left the hospital intent on finding a new job.

My brain had other plans.