09-Twelve Mile Limit by Randy Wayne White

completely disoriented. Maybe we all did. But I really started to lose it. I was crying, but not loud, because I didn’t want the others to hear. I’d been swallowing a lot of salt water because it was so rough, and I couldn’t stop shaking. I knew we were in a lot of trouble. Then something happened to me that I’ve never felt before.”
    Amelia Gardner experienced a cerebral gearing-down, like the arcing of a spark, that keyed the most primitive of our instincts, the fight-or-flight response. There was what she described as a tangible “wave” of fear followed by an inability to catch her breath, then overwhelming panic.
    “I stopped swimming to try to get myself back under control, and I turned away from the others because I didn’t want them to hear me crying. Then there was a big wave, and another big wave. When I turned around, they were gone. All three of them. I heard Janet yelling to me, yelling, ‘Don’t leave us!’ and I could hear Michael calling, too. I swam toward their voices, but they were gone. I couldn’t find them. I kept calling, screaming their names. It was black and windy with a lot of big breakers, and I hope I never experience another moment like that in my life. I felt like I’d just fallen over a cliff and there was no way back. That’s when I thought I was lost for sure.”
    Her only hope of finding her friends, and safety, she realized, was to somehow make it to the light tower. So, once again, she turned eastward and started swimming. Once again, though, because of her inflated vest, the waves kept knocking her back. Still terrified and panicked, Amelia Gardner then did a very brave thing—not that she described it to us as brave or gave herself any credit. What she did was take a leap of faith. She decided that she might well die, but she was going to make at least one last and final best effort to find a way to survive. She jettisoned her vest, her only guaranteed way to stay afloat. Then she turned into the waves and began to swim again.
    Four hours or so later, she washed into the girder-sized pilings of a 160-foot light tower, far off the Everglades coast of Florida. It took her a while to locate the service ladder, and then she climbed up onto the tower’s lowest deck. “I laid down on the platform just to sort of reassure myself that I’d really made it,” she told us. “It was still like some terrible dream. But, after a while, I got up and started calling for the other three. As the night went on, I kept thinking I heard their voices, heard them calling to me for help. The wind makes strange sounds out there. I kept getting up and calling back, calling their names.
    “I expected them to arrive at any minute,” she added, once again struggling to keep her emotions in check. She paused, took several slow breaths, before finishing, “They … the three of them… those three good people … they never did show up. I was there alone for another day and another night, and I kept screaming for them, calling their names. But they never answered, they never came.”
    Tomlinson stood, suddenly, walked to Amelia, and touched his palm to the back of her head as she sat there, face now in her hands, still taking slow, controlled breaths. The woman needed a break. Her voice had gotten softer and softer, as if revisiting that tragic night, the horror of it, was once again leaching the strength out of her. There was no way she could continue to talk without breaking down completely. For reasons I don’t understand, the stronger a person is, the more painful it is to watch them founder.
    Which is why we were all a little relieved when Tomlinson said, “That’s enough for now, Amelia. And thanks for the courage it took and the love it took to come to us and tell us what happened.”
    He stood there, patting her head, as he then looked to us and said, “This woman’s our guest and we need to take good care of her. So here’s what I suggest. She can tell us more later, if she feels like it, or maybe tomorrow,