Steven Womack - By Blood Written

The next morning, Taylor and Michael climbed out of bed about a half day earlier than she wanted, but they had an appointment with the dive master. At Michael’s urging, Taylor had signed up for scuba lessons in Manhattan, but had held off on taking her check dive until they got to Bonaire.

She went through the procedures, the equipment, and a test dive off the beach, followed by a quick quiz with the blond, sunburned Australian who ran the dive operation. The next thing she knew, she was standing in front of a passport camera having her picture taken for her “C” card, which certi-fied her as an open-water diver.

“Congratulations, love,” he said. “Now let’s do the real thing.”

She, Michael, and a dozen other divers hauled BCDs-the buoyancy-compensation devices that enabled divers to control the rate by which they ascended or descended-goggles, fins, regulators, and the heavy air tanks on board a thirty-foot dive boat. Taylor had eaten a light breakfast with a little juice and coffee, so was able to hold off the worst of the impending seasickness as the boat pushed through the swells toward open sea.

An hour later, they were farther north on the leeward side of the island, where the reefs were pristine and untouched, the water barely sixty feet deep and crystal clear. Michael had warned her that the first time she dived in open water, she might feel just a touch of anxiety, of drowning panic.

“Remember,” he told her as they sat on the side of the boat, preparing to roll backward into the ocean, “don’t forget to breathe, slowly and steadily. When we go in, let’s just float for a couple of minutes until we get adjusted.”

Taylor already had the regulator clenched firmly in her mouth. She nodded, pulled her goggles down over her eyes, held the regulator with her left hand and the mask with her right. Then she let go.

It was only a couple of feet from the gunwale to the water, but she felt as if she were falling forever. She hit the water, which suddenly seemed colder, and went completely under.

Her eyes widened, and for a moment she felt the surge of panic. She bit down hard on the regulator, trying to calm herself, to fight the urge to start paddling and fighting to the surface.

Then the BCD brought her to the surface and she bobbed there like a cork, her neck and face well out of the water, the heavy metal tank on her back now weightless. She looked around, and Michael was next to her a couple of feet away.

He brought his hands up like a referee calling a touchdown and then bent his arms into circles and tapped the top of his head with both hands. It was the universal scuba sign language for “I’m okay, how about you?”

Taylor forced herself to let go of the regulator, then brought her arms out of the water and mimicked his arm motion. She tried to loosen the muscles in her neck and to let her legs go limp beneath her. She looked down and realized it was almost like being suspended in air, sixty or seventy feet above the ocean floor. The water was warming now, her body adjusting, and she felt almost as if she were inside a womb.

The two floated there for what felt like at least a full minute, then Michael slowly paddled over to her and took the regulator out of his mouth and held it up out of the water.

“You ready to dive, lady?”

“I guess so,” Taylor tried to say, but she didn’t take the regulator out of her mouth and it came out as muffled gob-bledygook.

“I’ll take that at as a yes,” Michael said, slipping the regulator back into his mouth. Then he held up the dump tube off the BCD in his right hand, his thumb on the valve to release the air inside. He nodded. Taylor held her own tube up, her fingers tight, and nodded back. She watched as he pressed the button and his BCD began to hiss softly. As it deflated, Michael’s body sank slowly beneath the surface.

Taylor anxiously pressed her own valve and felt the BCD

around her begin to deflate. There was a hissing sound for her as well, and within, it seemed, half a second, her head was slipping beneath the surface into a silent, warm, thick world of blue.

As her head went under, she realized she’d closed her eyes tightly. Once under water, she forced herself to open them.

A small puddle of water had formed at the bottom of her mask. She tried to remember the procedure to clear it.

A few feet way, Michael had let go of his tube and was hovering just below her. He waved at her slowly, his hand fanning back and forth in the water. She waved back, forced a little more air out of her vest, and descended to his level.

He swam up to her, looked into her eyes through their masks, and reached out for her. He took her two hands in his, squeezed them slowly yet firmly, and she felt herself relax. She was with Michael; she could trust him and she was safe.

He reached for his relief valve again, held it over his head, held her hand with his free hand, then waited for her to lift her tube. He nodded. They both pushed the button and began sinking. Taylor felt the pressure rise in her ears, then let go of Michael’s hand, held her nose through the mask, and blew air into her ears to equalize the pressure.

She smiled; it worked. That was the first time she’d ever equalized perfectly the first time. She snaked her hand around and grabbed the lines that held her gauges. She held them up to her mask. They were descending through forty feet. She smiled behind the regulator and held it out to Michael. He looked at it and gave her a thumbs-up.

Taylor looked down and was surprised to find the coral-encrusted ocean floor coming up toward her. She and Michael put a small burst of air into their vests to keep them off the coral, a few feet above. Michael shifted himself into a prone position, hovering above the ocean floor in a Superman pose. She felt herself smile again, her lips hard on the regulator, trying to remember to breathe slowly and rhythmically. She swam up to him and flattened herself out, then reached over and took his hand. The two began slowly kicking their fins in a scissorlike motion, quietly moving over the seabed plants and coral. A school of bright yellow fish that Taylor didn’t recognize swarmed around them. In the distance, she caught a glimpse of the other divers and remembered that they weren’t alone.

They swam slowly along, alternating that movement with a still, relaxed drift. They swam in circles, never too far away from the anchor chain. Taylor relaxed, trusting Michael to take care of her, to watch over her. She was glad she’d done this, glad she’d met him, glad she’d taken the biggest chance of her life.

Taylor realized that at this moment, sixty feet below the surface of the Caribbean just off the coast of Venezuela, in the early part of March, with a man she’d been with barely a month, she was happier than she’d ever been in her life. For perhaps the first time in her life, she was completely happy.

The last night in Bonaire, Taylor and Michael went to a local place called the Island Cafe for dinner. Michael had done some research into where the locals went when they wanted to celebrate something away from the tourists. They took a cab into Kralendijk, the only real town on the island, and found themselves in a narrow alleyway near the town center.

The alleyway was dimly lit, crowded with locals, and had a different feel than anyplace else they’d been.

Michael held her hand and walked ahead of her down the winding alley, taking one wrong turn, backing up, then taking another. The Island Cafe was tiny compared to the other restaurants they’d been to, but the smells coming from the kitchen were exquisite. With all the diving and exploring, not to mention the staying up half the night locked in each other’s arms, they had both lost a couple of pounds. Taylor was ravenously hungry.