From the guest stateroom forward, muted by bulkheads of fiberglass and wood, came a booming thud-a-thud-a-thud backdropped by the sound of a grown man sobbing. It was Jeth, banging his fist or his head against the hull as he cried.
I said, “No. We’ve got to let him get it out in his own way. But after this, when we get home, we need to keep a close eye on him. There are all kinds of ways for people to self-destruct. I’d say he’s a prime candidate.”
She laid there quietly for a couple of minutes, holding me tight, hearing the wind, hearing Jeth, before she said, “What I hate to even think about, Doc, is that Janet’s still out there. Still alive and hoping we’ll find her, but that we haven’t looked in the right place. God, it just kills me when I think of that! Makes me feel so helpless.”
I hadn’t yet said anything to anyone about what I felt the chances were of Janet surviving for even twenty-four hours adrift in the Gulf of Mexico, but now I did. Maybe I shouldn’t have. I’m far from being an expert on human physiology, but because I’ve done a fair amount of diving, I’ve read the basic literature on survival at sea. Rightly or wrongly, I attempted to comfort her, because false hope is a common source of human pain.
I said, “Trust me, JoAnn, you don’t need to think about that anymore. You know about tropic hypothermia? Warm water hypothermia, it’s the same thing. I need to look it up again to be sure of the details, but I think I’m pretty close. Tropic hypothermia you get in water that’s eighty-two, eighty-three degrees, and it feels like bathwater. Stay in for a couple of hours, and you won’t even notice that your body’s core temperature is gradually dropping to match the temperature of the water. But that’s what happens.
“I didn’t memorize the tables exactly, but in water that’s in the low eighties, even a healthy person might survive for only twenty-four hours or so. I checked it our first day out-the water temp here’s seventy-seven degrees. I doubt that Janet or the other two made it through the second night still conscious.”
I was wrong, as I would learn later. Absolutely wrong in the face of the facts and the newest research data. Like mostly poorly informed people, though, I spoke with a conviction so firm that JoAnn was convinced.
“Oh God, Doc, that’s so sad. But they were wearing wet suits… wouldn’t that make it-”
“Janet showed me her wet suit before she did her first open-water dive, her new pink one with the black panels. Remember when she did that trip to Key Largo? It’s a shorty, covered just her thighs and upper body. A warm-water suit. I’m not sure how thick the neoprene was, but it wasn’t real thick. Two, maybe three millimeters, which is about pretty typical for tropical water divers.
“The other two people were wearing similar wet suits, according to my Coast Guard pals. Michael Sanford’s was blue and black, Grace Walker’s was blue and green, and Janet’s, at least, was a high-visibility pink. What people forget is that human beings are not built for the water. We are land creatures. Water removes heat from the body about twenty-five times faster than cold air, and most of that heat loss occurs through the head. Swimming, thrashing around, or struggling in water increases heat loss. And you know how rough it is out here.”
“Do I ever. The way we’ve gotten banged around, I’ll be sore for a week.” I felt JoAnn’s body move as she sighed heavily. “Then she’s dead. Janet’s dead. That’s what you’re saying. You’ve known all along.”
“If she’s still in the water, that’d be my guess. But like I said, I need to go back and do some research. I have a friend out west who used to be the Coast Guard’s surgeon general. The equivalent of it, anyway. He’s done a lot of research on hypothermia, so I need to give him a call.”
“I almost hate to ask, but I have to. Doc, how would it have been for her? Those last hours?”
I’d thought a lot about it. When you lose someone tragically that you care about, much of the anguish comes from imagining their anguish during their final moments. So I gave JoAnn an edited version. But not edited much. I told her that the body is an amazing thing-it’s got lots of ways to conserve heat. When we’re exposed to cool water, small blood vessels near the skin’s surface automatically constrict to keep blood flow away from the outer tissues. That’s true of the entire body except for the brain, which needs unrestricted blood flow. Which is why the blood vessels of the head do not constrict and why heat is lost most quickly from the area of the head.
“So her first major organ affected,” I said, “was her brain. She probably got confused, then drowsy. More than likely, she just fell asleep. Once her core temp got below… I think it’s ninety-five degrees, once her core temperature got below that, her heartbeat would have become erratic, and then, finally, it would have stopped. But, like I said, she’d have been asleep by that time.”
“So it wouldn’t have been that bad for her and the others?”
“No,” I lied. “Not that bad at all.”
We lay there in silence for a time. Beyond the canvas canopy I’d rigged to keep off the dew, I could see the black horizon lifting, pausing, then falling out of a black sky. I wondered as I’d wondered before: What had it been like for Janet? As I wrestled with all the horrible scenarios, Janet was there in memory, her pudgy, girlish face alive in my mind and her sensitive eyes, green and kind, looking directly into mine.
I remembered the smell of the musky perfume she sometimes wore. Remembered the distinctive cocoa-butter scent of body cream, and how, when she was excited or telling a joke, she punctuated her sentences by combing her fingers through her hair. I remembered that the first time Janet made me laugh, really laugh, was a couple of weeks after she’d been working in the lab, and she accidentally let it slip that she’d named each and every one of my fish. Janet had made me laugh many times after that, and she’d confided in me and encouraged me. She’d brought me little handmade presents at Christmas and dyed eggs with silly faces at Easter. In front of others, she’d slapped me on the ass at dock parties, and, when she knew I was stressed, she’d come quietly up behind me and massage the muscles of my neck and shoulders. Janet was a good woman, and she had been a good and true friend.
I thought that JoAnn had drifted off to sleep when, suddenly, she spoke again. “Do you hear it?”
I lifted my head slightly. “No. I don’t hear anything.”
“That’s what I mean. He’s stopped. Finally, the poor darling’s stopped. Probably exhausted.”
She meant Jeth.
Then, after another long silence, she said, “Doc, there’s one thing I will never understand. If Janet and the other two were wearing those big, inflated vests, why didn’t we find them? All those air hours, the choppers and planes, and all the boats out here looking. Why? It seems almost impossible.”
I said, “I don’t know, JoAnn. It does seem impossible. That’s one question I can’t answer.”
Rhonda joined us for a bit. She came topside, sniffling and snuffing, a tall, skinny-hipped woman with short brown hair and a heart as big as Tomlinson’s. Her voice was quivering as she said, “You got room there for one more?” and slid her long body in behind me when I lifted the blanket as invitation.
I’ve read somewhere that certain religious groups and some primitive societies practice a form of healing known, variously, as “powwowing” or “hiving” in which members of the group unite in what is, essentially, an extended communal hug. I don’t believe in herbal cures or faith healing, but I have to admit that, lying between those two women, sandwiched by people whom I’ve come to respect and love, I felt better than I had since the end of our second day searching for Janet. Why? Because by the end of that long day, I was pretty certain that Janet was gone.
The sense of respite didn’t last, though. The two ladies returned to their own beds a little after midnight, and I still couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t get the question What had it been like? out of my mind. It was a haunting question to consider.