Happens All The Time

              

Our chairs were in a semi-circle so we could watch the ocean. It was late afternoon on my friend’s birthday. I had just returned to the beach with a heated appetizer and had poured her a glass of champagne.

We heard a child's scream.

At first, I thought the child was having a meltdown, an event I remembered from years of motherhood past. I ignored the situation to let the parents handle it and turned away to get a glass of wine out of the cooler. But then, two children started screaming. We saw a woman enter the water and a man waving his arms from beyond the breakers. The children's father was in trouble.

After assessing the ocean, we realized that there was a rip current nearby, which is a usual Hatteras occurrence, but the waters were rough since Tropical Storm Bertha had passed us by the day before. The woman who entered the water was the man’s wife and the children’s mother. The rip had taken him out into the ocean.

While I was heating appetizers at the house, my friends had observed the family. They were staying

at a nearby campground, probably their first time on Hatteras Island, and obvious novices with the waters around Hatteras.

My friend called 911 since the victim's wife went into the water without a floatation device to save her husband. A man, who had been talking with the couple earlier, jumped into the surf with a boogie board, he said later, with the intention of saving the husband. He soon realized the wife was in trouble, too. She fought him, wanting to save her husband, but in her panic didn’t realize that she had set herself up as the second victim. The man won and brought her back to the beach. We were relieved.

A National Park Service Officer arrived, followed by a rescuer with a surfboard, who entered the water before the jet-ski team arrived. All rescuers are volunteers on Hatteras Island.

We stood on the dunes, and the National Park Service officer stood on the hood of his truck using binoculars to see the victim over the waves. We directed the surfer pointing in the man’s direction. The surfer found him, but by that time, the man was unresponsive. The jet-ski team arrived and brought him to shore. We stood watching, not gawking, concerned for them. We offered bottles of water to the victim's wife and children. An officer took the family off the beach, we think, fearing shock, but also to avoid their witnessing the resuscitation effort. It seemed forever, but probably after fifteen minutes, they got a pulse. With IV attached, they loaded him into a four-wheel ambulance. From there, they transported him via airlift to a Norfolk hospital. We will try to find out his status.

We celebrated no more and sat down in our chairs in disbelief. How do you know what you don’t know? A novice, a dangerous ocean, a naive family. The man hadn’t seemed to panic, but we don’t know if he fought the current or if he just wasn’t a strong swimmer. 

Just as Linda Rodriguez’s unexpected surgery—the unexpected happens—the reason for my blogging in her place today. Having survived the surgery, Linda is recovering. We’ll pray the father is recovering, too.

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Update: The forty-four year old husband and father died in the hospital the next day.
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Normal life, happy vacation, and a disaster in a blink. It happens so fast. It happens all the time.