I've heard writers in interviews talking about having had a real need to tell a story. Though I've been writing for some time now, I've never needed to "get it out" like that. I've always only wanted to write my stories. These are, I think, completely different matters.
Tim O'Brien, a favorite writer of mine, who writes moving and poignant stories about the Vietnam War, once explained that although he calls his stories true, many of the events didn't really happen. They're true stories, but they're not real stories. I think it's a beautiful way of saying that a fictional story can be genuine. At the same time, though, something about it doesn't sit right with me.
What follows is a real, true story about a student who almost drowned in the Boston College pool Thursday. It's a story I need to tell.
Midway through a freestyle stroke, as my head surfaced above water and I sucked at air, I heard the lifeguard's whistle, short and shrill. I didn't immediately stop swimming but continued toward the end of my lane. Someone was probably running on the pool deck or something, I thought. I guess sometimes we're so used to things not going wrong that we don't believe things actually can.
When I neared the wall and saw the commotion a few lanes down from me - the swimmer from the adjacent lane and the lifeguard, a BC student herself, were hauling an inert body up onto the pool deck - I knew something had happened. But even then it seemed impossible to me that the situation might end in a death. The lifeguard would perform CPR, everyone would smile and offer congratulations on a life saved nicely and neatly, and we'd go back to our lives, back to our swimming.
Everything that happened next must've taken only moments, but it felt so much longer. I got out of the pool. The lifeguard and the swimmer were positioning the body of the student. For some reason, before she began listening for a heartbeat, the lifeguard stripped her shirt and shorts so that she was only in her black swimsuit. I don't know why she did this (to use her body heat to prevent shock?). Maybe she doesn't know, either. I can only imagine the alternating waves of panic and panic-control training that must have been flooding her mind right then. One of the other lifeguards (BC always has at least two on duty, one for each pool) was on the phone with campus police. The two lifeguards were talking (not shouting) to each other - Yes, I've called the police - No, he isn't breathing - Can everyone please get their towels? - But at the same time there were these moments of complete, eerie silence.
There'd been five or six of us swimming in the pool. Now we were all out of the water, standing still. We handed over our towels to dry the student off and stood out of the way of the lifeguards, and then the paramedics, when they came moments later. One swimmer, an older man, just stood there shaking his head. We all kept looking from the unmoving body to each others' faces, and back again, and checking the digital clock on the wall.
Why had the student started drowning? I don't think anyone knew. I'd seen him getting into the water. He'd sat on the pool edge for quite some time before getting in, and then when he did get in, oddly, he hadn't taken off his shirt. But I didn't think anything of it at the time because he looked as healthy as any of us. I guess it doesn't really matter why. Now he was lying on the pool deck in a puddle of water, his stomach strangely distended.
I've seen plenty of actors "die" in movies. I've seen real deaths on television newsreels and on the internet. Each of my grandparents have died, each time heartbreaking, but also each time, expected. I've received the news unexpectedly too: my uncle, last December, from an alcohol induced insult to the brain; a friend in junior high who hadn't taken her insulin. But I've never watched someone dying, never been submerged unexpectedly into a situation where I didn't know whether or not another human being was going to live. It's completely different.
After what seemed like ages, I saw the young man start jerking and the paramedic begin saying, You're doing great ... just keep it coming ... and I realized that the student was going to make it. Only then did the lifeguard who had pulled him out begin a sort of sobbing, and the other lifeguard came over and put an arm around her shoulders.
I left the pool deck shortly after that. Apparently I showered and changed into my clothes, because I found myself walking toward 21 Campanella Way, realizing that it was raining and that I should open my umbrella. I was halfway through the double doors of Campanella before I realized that now I needed to close the umbrella. I walked up to the terrace at the base of O'Neill, looked down at the Plex and watched the stretcher being pushed toward one of the two ambulances. I remember being amazed when I heard the single chime from Gasson. Only 15 minutes had passed since I'd heard the shrill whistle. In 15 minutes my perspective had changed completely.
I needed to write this, I guess, for those student lifeguards and for the paramedics. Their efforts needed to be recognized. They showed, in both the trained movements of their bodies and in the terrified emotion in their faces, a real - and true - thing. Something about what it means to be human.
J. Mark Fullmer is a student in the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences.
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