It was some years back I learned to my surprise that I was claustrophobic. I was having an MRI. I was a larger man then than now, and if I took a deep breath, my chest touched the top of the tube. What a dilemma! I wanted out of there, and I mean ten minutes ago! Problem: 1.) I would appear a weenie, 2.) I would appear, having over the years prescribed for others, what I could not tolerate myself, 3.) Word would be all over the hospital in less time than it takes you to glance at your watch.
As hard as that was – yes, I sucked it up and didn’t start crying for my Mommy – I can think of something worse: How about being underwater, in the dark, the only thing separating you for a starring role in tomorrow’s obituaries was your regulator [the breathing thing-thing that divers wear]?
Well, that’s just what my friend Travis and his buddy do. They ‘cave dive.’ What’s more incredible, they do it on purpose! So you descend sixty to one hundred feet, find a cave opening, and enter, guided only by your head lamps, protected only by knowledge, oxygen tanks, and lots of good luck. Not for me; I’d prefer a natural death.
One day, Travis was out of town. His diving buddy gets a call from the guy who owns Spain. (Okay, maybe he’s not the owner, but he’s got a huge dorsal fin in the financial community.) His cave-diving son had gone missing for three days. The man, his voice freighted with anguish, called Dave (the friend) to retrieve his son’s dead body. Try forgetting that phone call!
Dave was escorted on a yacht the size of Rhode Island to the son’s dive point. “Sixty feet down,” the man said.
Dave suited up and sat backwards into a calm sea. He finned down to sixty feet and began looking for the mouth of the underwater cave. There! His powerful headlamp piercing the dark he entered. On and on he swam with his twin tanks, watching his oxygen reserve meter. Maybe one hundred yards into that forbidding tunnel, he began to notice small pockets of air suspended by the ceiling (a normal phenomenon of physics.)
Suddenly he wiped his mask. What the…? He was seeing brief, weak flashes of light. Reflection from his headlamp? Bad oxygen? The faint flickering grew stronger. Now the air suspended above the water grew into a long spacing. Dave surfaced and breathed in air that though stale was sustainable to life. Still the flickers persisted.
Suddenly, to his amazement, he saw a young man, suspended by his elbows, positioned in the flume of air, his tanks having long since emptied. His headlamp, though weak, was still giving a puny luminescence. He surfaced next to the man, introduced himself, and formulated a plan.
Dave buddy-breathed the youngster, taking a breath from his respirator, giving it to the victim, and on and on until at last they reached the mouth of the cave and began their assent. Dave inflated his buoyancy vest, and let physics do the rest.
Breaking water, Dave began to wave one arm and scream to the crew of the yacht. “..live!” “..s’ live!” Finally, they heard Dave clearly, “HE”S ALIVE!”
Several power dinghies full-throttled towards them, and a stricken father who had already planned the funeral of his son, held him in Love’s most desperate embrace. The son, tried to respond, but hypothermia and starvation took hands with an enervating relief; he just slumped against his father.
Word is Dave was paid far more for this rescue than the agreed upon price. I hear he’s a king somewhere close to Spain.
– Lucky Garvin
