Some years ago I pulled a drowning woman from a lake. It was a sudden, random intersection of two strangers’ lives, on a cold, slate-gray Saturday morning in late December, just before Christmas. I had been driving home on the road along the shore, noticing that although lake wasn’t yet frozen, there was a crust of ice along the water’s edge, and a gusting wind was rippling the surface. Out of the corner of my eye I saw what seemed to be a log—or was it a dog?--about thirty yards out. Not just floating, but moving, rolling and turning in the water.
More curious than alarmed, I pulled over and walked down to the small beach where I could see that it was a person, fully clothed, sinking then resurfacing, arms moving in a sort of slow motion version of swimming. It was certainly not a place where any human should have been.
I remember feeling very lonely. There was no one else around, no one to turn this over to, no one to team up with. I had no cell phone. I desperately wanted another choice, but there was none. I thought of running to a house, yelling for help, just so I could tell myself, and say to the world, that at least I’d done something. But it would have been too late, and I knew it.
So, strangely, going into the water that morning seemed less an act of bravery than an act of fear-avoidance. This isn’t false modesty, it’s just the way it felt. I couldn’t face what I knew would be the lifelong corrosive knowledge that I had failed to act at a moment when I alone was capable of acting.
The lake is fairly shallow by the shore, but as I walked in deeper and deeper the muscles in my body began to feel paralyzed, and when I got chest deep I started hyperventilating. Fifteen yards from the person- a woman, I could now see—I saw that she had stopped moving, and was submerged, on her back. I remember seeing her pale face and dark hair through the lake’s watery lens. When I reached her I was on my tiptoes, my mouth barely above the surface. The water felt thick and heavy. If she’d been any farther out, if I’d had to swim, I couldn’t have done it. I would have given up. But I was able to grab the sleeve of her parka and slowly—very slowly—begin pulling her back towards the shore.
A jogger had stopped, and was shouting “Hurry up, hurry up. I’m a doctor.” We pulled her on to the beach just as the police arrived and they all began life saving procedures. I stuck around for a few minutes—deeply relieved, but more cold than anything else--then drove home and took a very long, hot shower.
The next Wednesday, there was a small piece in the local paper titled “Police Pull Drowning Woman From Lake.” This didn’t surprise me, or bother me, as I hadn’t stayed around long enough for anyone to get my name. It was enough that I knew what had really happened. I remembered that as I was leaving the lake, one of the cops had said“Hey, man, you’re a hero.” I didn’t feel like a hero. I felt like someone who hadn’t failed, which was an even better, and more sustaining, feeling.
I’ve never had the slightest urge to find the woman and tell her, or ask her, about the events of that Saturday. It seems as though it would be an invasion of privacy. But I think about that morning every time I drive by the lake, and I have often wondered how she is. Complete strangers, our lives were bound together, suddenly and dramatically, in a moment of crisis. A crisis that in different ways we each survived, connecting us forever.