Not Without Hope (15 page)

T
he waves were five to seven feet, choppy. All you could hear were waves breaking and hitting the boat or flying against my back or hitting me in the face. I was so tired. I thought, Are these my last few hours?

I kept thinking about Will, how close I was to him. I thought about Marquis and Corey, too, but losing your best friend in your arms is a lot different. Part of the reason I was still alive was definitely because of Will. He had sacrificed himself and devoted himself to being a leader. We probably wouldn’t have had life jackets without him. I can’t imagine that the Gatorade and the pretzels worked against me. Those extra few calories coated my system and gave me just enough energy. Working with him that second day, just the two of us, I wouldn’t have wanted anyone better. The four of us had worked as best as we could, but Will had definitely helped to save my life to that point.

He always had ideas and was planning things, saying, “Let’s do this and that.” He was a good student, a smart football player. Always got his work done on time. Always attended class. Always came on time for meetings. He just said, “Yes, sir,” to coaches, or if
he didn’t know something, he’d ask. He was a joy to coach. He just went out every day and tried to get better.

He always had a list of things to do. I was the same way. If we went camping, I wrote down every item we needed to bring. Everything. Food we had in the house, food we needed to buy. A very intricate list: two comforters, three pillows, dog leashes. We would never forget anything, even utensils. We always brought two spatulas, just in case. Will never came shorthanded. We’d always have enough food for two extra days. When we tailgated, we always had food for stragglers: “Here, have a beer and a brat.” He was always up for a good time.

Without Will, this night in the water seemed much longer than the first one. There was no one to talk to. Time expanded. When I thought the sun should be coming up, it was only three o’clock. I would think, okay, it’s been an hour since I looked at the watch and it would be only twenty or twenty-five minutes.

I
FELT AN
urge to go under the boat to see if I could find something to eat or drink. My hunger had returned. My body was eating away at anything I had left. All the fat was burned and now it was eating at the muscle. I was dying. I knew I had to make one last-ditch effort to get some water or something to eat. I knew that when you didn’t get the proper nutrients your organs got damaged, like when you were anorexic or bulimic.

I had moved past the city I saw earlier—the glow from Tampa, maybe, or a cruise ship or whatever it was—and once again it was dark. I prayed, “Please, God, find me. I won’t quit on you.” And I said, “I love you, Mom. I won’t quit on you.”

I kept remembering what Corey had said the first night: “No way in hell I’m going out like this.”

The dull repetition continued all night. I’d doze, and then a
wave would shoot needles up my back and startle me awake. My cheeks were frozen. My forehead was cold. My lips felt like I had licked an ice-cube tray and ripped away the skin. I kept trying to get low in my jacket, chin to chest, the way a bird burrows into its wing. I kept adjusting my right leg, lifting it off the hull, or trying to straighten it. I had used that leg to cradle Marquis, and now it felt useless. I shrugged my shoulders and pumped my chest. I tried to turn it into a miniworkout. I would shrug my shoulders up to my ears, working my traps. I’d do that 100 times—it just burned. I’d pump my chest 50 times. Same thing with my calves. I’d flex my calves and count to 100 or 150. I didn’t count out loud, but sometimes I moved my lips just to pass the time. I did that a few times through the night, trying to create blood flow and warmth. I knew it wouldn’t be bad for me. At the same time, I thought, Don’t use too much energy. I didn’t have anything to refuel with.

S
UNRISE
. I
T LOOKED
like a bright circle coming right out of the water. It was Monday, March 2. The sky was a little overcast. It was definitely warmer at dawn than at midnight. The waves were a little less choppy and more like swells again. There was a random gust of wind every minute or so, but it was better now than before.

I
WAS STILL
going in and out. I was definitely delirious. My head was down, resting on my hands on the motor. I was daydreaming, right at sunrise. Hallucinating. I heard someone yelling, then I realized it was me. I caught myself.

I was on a boat and the other guys were also there, behind me. I was in my spot, at the stern, straddling the motor, facing out to sea. Marquis and Corey and Will were about ten feet behind me, toward the front of the boat. They were standing there. My side of
the boat was upside down, but theirs was right side up. They stood under the canopy, driving the boat. I screamed at them. I wanted a gallon of water. “Water, water!” I yelled, long, loud, and mean. I was angry, pissed. I would yell loud and then it would get louder for a few seconds. “Water, water, water!”

They didn’t say anything. They were facing me, just their faces, not their whole bodies. I screamed, “Water, damn it!” I felt they were playing a game, ignoring me, giving me a hard time, like, “Too bad, dude, you can’t have it.”

I reached back with my right hand, holding on to the motor with my left hand, my head down, my eyes closed. I reached like they might hand me something. I could see a clear plastic jug they were going to give me. They were messing with me. They wouldn’t hand it over.

Then all of a sudden I popped my head up. I was very alert, very aware. I had never felt that way before. I thought, Oh my God. Holy shit, I’m losing it. I was getting cuckoo. This must have been the same exact thing that happened to Marquis first, then Corey, and finally to Will. And now it was happening to me.

I was frightened to a new level, if that was possible. I tried to stay awake, doing my little exercises. I forgot about being cold and hungry. I was trying to wake up. I thought hypothermia or dementia, or whatever it was, was setting in. I knew this was the first stage of drifting away. My mind was shutting down.

I
WAS SEEING
things, making random yells. This is what Marquis and Corey and Will had done. It wasn’t that they went AWOL or gave up. They had no idea. Their minds were shot. They lost it because of dehydration and hypothermia. And it could happen to me. It was happening to me.

Please, God, come on, come on, I thought to myself. I knew I
had to get under the boat. I had to find something to eat or drink, a turkey sandwich, or peanut-butter-and-jelly or a jug of water. I thought there was a case of beer or two still stored under there. I knew I had to go under or nothing would change. I would just wait there until I died. But I knew I wouldn’t go without one last fight. I knew the elements wouldn’t kill me, but dehydration or starvation could.

I tried to stand a little on the hull and straighten my legs. My hamstrings were so tight, my posture was so bad. My back was so tight, it felt like it was in a brace. I took a look at my legs. They were very white, kind of chalky and pasty from being in the water so long. Particularly my feet. I would shift my legs to get some circulation going. I tried to stand, but all I could really do was put my stomach against the motor and try to lean forward a little to stretch my legs and back.

The sea wasn’t so rough, and the water looked a lot clearer. The waves weren’t breaking, really. They were round and they would lift the boat up and it would smack back into the water. The water was a lot bluer and clearer. It was darker in some areas, lighter in others. The sun was out. It was a lot warmer. It must have been eight or nine o’clock in the morning. While I stretched, I kept thinking about what I would do to get under the boat.

I still had the steering cable tied to the motor. I could tie off my life jacket and backpack. But where had Marquis put all that stuff onboard? I would only have a few seconds to find anything. Would I be able to see under there?

I must have thought about it for an hour. I had to get things together or this was it. I had to at least try to find something. It would only get worse. No way it would get better. I had nothing to eat, and I wouldn’t dare try to drink seawater. In elementary school, we had watched
The Voyage of the Mimi
in class. We’d watch a half-hour segment each day. These people were on a giant sailboat and
they were out doing research on whales. Toward the end, they got in a bad storm and the boat was shipwrecked and they were on an island and ran out of supplies. The younger kid, the teenager on the boat, said, “That’s okay, I’ll drink the salt water,” and the captain said, “No, you can’t.” They built a campfire and they boiled the water, or they put salt water in a bowl and put a trash bag over the bowl, and when the water evaporated, the condensation stayed on the bag and dripped down and they were able to drink it.

I kept looking at my watch. I hadn’t eaten anything in the water except a few little pretzels and a half bottle of Gatorade. I had had pasta on Friday night, then cereal and a protein bar on Saturday morning, but I lost all of that. Now it was Monday, two days later. I was empty.

Another helicopter flew by. I waved my life jacket. It was far away and I only saw it for a short time. It moved in the opposite direction that I was facing. That brought me a little hope. At least they were still out looking for us. It was daytime now, I would be easier to see. At least I hoped so.

I was encouraged and discouraged, that same awful feeling from the first time we saw a helicopter, or a light, that first night. Now there was a little less excitement. I knew the chances of them finding me were slim to none. At the same time I thought I would persevere and somehow get out of this. At least the Coast Guard was still looking. As long as they were looking, I wasn’t going to quit.

I thought again of my mother, crying next to my coffin. I could picture her hugging my sister, and my dad with both of his arms around their backs. My mom had on a black dress. I saw a room with a coffin and the three of them. My mom was crying “Why, why?”

Again, I wondered who would attend my funeral. I thought about the people I was close to, from my grandmother to my
friends. I thought about them hearing the news. I wondered if my ex-girlfriends would show up. I pictured their faces, like in a year-book. I thought about my aunts and uncles. I thought about my aunt Sue.

She was my mother’s oldest sibling. She had ovarian cancer when I was trying out for football at USF. That August, during two-a-days, it was so hard, really hard, for my mother. I had loved visiting my aunt when we were young. We would come to Florida and go to Naples to visit her and Uncle Ben. I saw a lot of my mom in her. She was very funny. We’d play cards a lot. She always asked if I was hungry. She put food or sweets out for me, always made me breakfast. Her house always smelled so clean. It was the smell I thought of when we were going to Florida.

My uncle had a very successful business, concrete, one of many. When Aunt Sue got sick, I missed some practices. The team prayed for her. She died that fall. She was in the hospital and was gone within a month. She was too weak to take chemotherapy. I thought about how bad I hurt when we lost her. And how bad my mom hurt. And how much worse it would be for mom if she lost her son. I said, “Aunt Sue, if you’re up there, I could use your help right now.”

I said to myself, Dear God, I’ll do anything. I thought about Marquis and Corey and Will and I said, “Guys, if you’re up there….”

I
HELD THE
cross I was wearing around my neck. I had the chain since high school. At first it had my basketball number, 31, on it. Then I got a little football with my USF number, 41. After I left the team, I felt it wasn’t the right thing to wear anymore. I mentioned to my sister that I wanted something a little different. The previous Christmas, she had given me a simple cross. I put the cross in my mouth. It tasted cold and salty.

I
STILL HAD
a nasty taste in my mouth, morning breath times five. I would wash it out with water but I never swallowed. I had phlegm in my throat and my nose was stopped up. I felt like I had a cold or the flu. I knew I was getting worse and worse and I had to get under the boat. I had to overcome my fear of going under the first night. This was my last-ditch effort.

I went back and forth, wondering what it would look like under there. I had never opened my eyes in salt water before. I didn’t know if I would be able to see very well. I didn’t know if Will had opened his eyes or just reached around blindly. I figured it would sting and burn, but that’s not what I was afraid of. I was afraid of getting stuck underneath and not coming up. If I was feeling 100 percent, it would have been a whole different story. Or even 50 percent. Or if it had been in normal conditions, not with waves pushing the boat up and down and me not eating and drinking or sleeping in forever. Now it was different. I was alone. If I got stuck under there, no one could help me.

I ran through it so many times. I was very afraid. Strengthwise, I knew I was extremely limited. Going in the water without a life jacket would be pretty scary. I thought about calling 9-1-1, then remembered that my phone was ruined. I tried it anyway, but there was nothing there. I had Will’s phone and his wallet in my bag, too, but his phone had been ruined from the beginning—it never worked. I opened his wallet and looked at his ID. “I’m sorry, Will,” I said. “I love you.”

I took the steering cable and ran it through my life jacket and backpack and tied them off at the motor. I tried to tie a double knot, but my hands—beat-up, cold, and cut-up—were so weak and inflexible that it was hard to make a tight knot. I lifted my legs and there was blood going down my calves. My legs from the knees
down were swollen and cut. My butt felt like it was elevated, like I was sitting on a two-inch piece of jagged metal and it was digging into me. I was so uncomfortable. I’d try to shift my body weight but the crack of my butt was very tender after sitting on a fiberglass keel for two days. It had become almost unbearable.