What If?

It was an ordinary day. A group of them were swimming one kilometre from Teabag Bay north to the Mooloolaba Surf Club. As they always did, several times a week.

She freestyled head down, enjoying the vast pattern of terraced sand below, like a miniature desert. They swam under a blue and yellow sky. Her flippers powered her along past familiar landmarks they all knew, the triangular building, the white measuring poles, the long border of horse casuarinas, a carpark, fanning out now, each alone. She was comfortable, non-thinking, looking for schools of bream, a stingray, a sudden bright tropical fish—always a bonus.

Ahead the fastest swimmers approached the Surf Club. One by one the women emerged and trailed up to the club pulling off their caps and goggles, scraggle-haired.

She turned towards the familiar beach, now so close she yanked off her flippers and held them in one hand. She stretched her feet to touch bottom. It wasn’t there. She expected shallow water! Hanging on to her flippers awkwardly, she kicked harder towards shore. The bottom still wasn’t there. In fact she seemed to be drifting further out.

The moment can change in seconds. Doubt, disbelief, fear. She was no longer in control. She struggled again towards the sand, clinging to the heavy flippers in the hope they could propel her in. But submerging her head to pull them on her feet, she lost her breath. Weak and gasping, she tried again. A set of waves slammed in, one hard on another. Exhausted, she ducked under each one.

Fighting now to stay on top of the water, she finally dropped the flippers. Trying to relax and think of a strategy was beyond her. She had not thought clearly. She had done all the wrong things from the beginning. She did the only thing left: against her pride she raised her arm, kept it there as long as she could.

Within what must have been seconds a brown muscular body sliced towards her on a board. She could not measure her relief and the fact that she could now give to someone else the effort and responsibility for herself. She let everything go.

The man dragged her in front of him on the board. Like a sack, she fell back into the water but he hauled her on again. And a second time. He paddled what now seemed a ludicrously short distance to the shore—that frightening gap that had seemed to her minutes before like the River Styx.

Never had firm sand felt so good. Never had she been so grateful; or respected the sea as she did now; or appreciated lifesavers for what they do. If ever there was a knight in armour, it was this man on a board.

Weak and shocked, filled with the magnitude of what had just happened, she joined her group of swimming friends anxiously waiting. Crowding round her, they offered support but her mind was elsewhere, not with them.

It was home she wanted, her husband, and time to settle and go over her disturbing thoughts. Why did pride of all things stop her from raising her arm earlier? How many misjudge, underestimate the sea and themselves! There is so little margin when one considers that life and breath, unlike other emergencies, are together in such an unforgiving time frame. How quickly and without warning can life be taken, changing families forever—while the sun shines and people, unaware, play nearby. She imagined Icarus, his wings aflame, falling into the sea unnoticed while everyone else gets on with their lives.

But tormenting her for weeks afterwards and even now fifteen years later, was the question: Could she have saved herself?

And what about all the other people who in confronting the great variety of risks that inhabit living, crossing the railway line just before the train, discovering cancer early only by accident, missing a flight that crashed—what about these lucky ones who are left with facing the question: What if?