Randy White - Twelve Mile Limit

But if drifting as a group was difficult, swimming as a group was even harder. One reason was that Grace and Michael were no longer wearing fins. They’d removed theirs just before the boat capsized. Another reason was that neither Grace nor Janet was a strong swimmer.

“Grace kept saying she didn’t think she could make it, and Janet just kept telling her that we had to make it because we didn’t have a choice. She told Grace to think about all the weight they were going to lose, burning all those calories. Funny stuff to keep our spirits up.

“So we just plugged along, side by side, with me on one end and Michael on the other, Janet and Grace between us. I don’t know how long we swam. But we didn’t seem to be getting anywhere. We’d kick toward the light, then a big wave would come out of nowhere and knock us back.”

Amelia said it was then that she lost all sense of time. They may have swam for only a few minutes, maybe half an hour.

“I’m sorry,” she told us, “that part is all hazy to me. I remember wondering, ‘Is this really happening?’ Like maybe it was some terrible nightmare. All I could see was that flashing light, and sometimes it seemed like it was a hundred miles away and sometimes it seemed like it flashed right in the middle of my brain. I became 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, if Ransom or the good ladies of the Satin Doll can talk her into spending the night with us here at the marina. But I warn you right now, Amelia, stay at Dinkin’s Bay tonight, and you’re in for an evening of blissful excesses…” He smiled at her, his haunted eyes telling her something, offering comfort, perhaps, as he added, “Blissful excess or maybe even some wholesale debauchery. We’ll have all the food and drink you can handle.”

Right on cue, people hooted and applauded.

That quick, he’d changed the mood. Amelia lifted her face from her hands. He’d earned a little smile.

Later that night, what started as a typical bar fight nearly escalated into a riot, and, as I told Tomlinson later, we should have both seen it coming and found a way to put a halt to it before it got started.

“How was I supposed to stop anything?” he asked me. “I had a pitcher of margaritas in me, four Singapore slings, three grande mojitos made with delicious fresh mint, a six-pack of Corona, plus two joints of very fine Voodoo Surprise. There also may have been pills involved-I remember very distinctly speaking to that lady anesthetist from Englewood. We both know she tends to be overly generous with her recreational pharmaceuticals. No telling what poison that Asiatic brute may have put into my hands. My friend-” he was shaking his head, being serious, “it is impossible for one to impose social order when one is lying facedown, puking, in the sand next to the totem pole at Jensen’s Marina.”

Then he pointed out: “I do remember that you seemed a little drunk yourself, Marion. That’s not something we see in these parts very often, Doc Ford out of control. I don’t think you were in a position to stop what happened, either.”

Well… not out of control, but I did have too much to drink. Tomlinson was right. It’s something I rarely do. Alcohol poisoning makes it impossible to do the quiet, articulate work in my lab at night or to enjoy my run or ocean swim the next morning.

But like everyone else at the marina, Amelia’s story had ripped the emotional bottom right out of me. I’d believed everything she’d said, which is why in retrospect her confidential assertion to me that a boat might have picked the others up really knocked me off my own personal tracks.

I’d already accepted the fact that Janet was lost. She was dead and gone, and I’d said good-bye to her in my own private way.

Now, though, Amelia Gardner had opened a tiny little corridor of uncertainty and hope. I was so shaken by it that I immediately understood her wisdom when she asked me not to share the information with the others.