The Equipment

Undertow

Chapter 15: The Equipment

The rescue can weighed three and a half pounds. Red plastic, hard-shelled, torpedo-shaped, twenty-eight inches long, with a molded handle at the top and a towline attachment at the rear and a strap that went over the shoulder and across the chest and that held the can against the guard's back during the sprint and trailed the can behind the guard during the swim. The can was manufactured by Burnside Products of Barnegat, New Jersey, sixty miles south of Asbury Park, a company that made the cans in a factory near the bay and that shipped them to beach patrols along the eastern seaboard, the cans arriving in cardboard boxes in the spring, six to a box, packed in the molded Styrofoam forms that held each can the way a coffin held a body, which was a comparison James did not make and did not think, because the can was not a coffin, the can was the opposite of a coffin, the can was the thing that prevented the coffin, the red plastic intermediary between the drowning and the drowned.

James had held the rescue can ten thousand times. He had held it in training and in rescues and in the morning inspections and in the evening storage and in the carrying from the locker to the stand and from the stand to the locker, the daily handling of the tool that had made the tool an extension of the hand, the hand knowing the can the way the hand knew itself, by proprioception, by the body's internal awareness of the thing that the body held so often that the holding had become automatic, had become the resting state, the default condition of the hand when the hand was on duty, the hand expecting the can, reaching for the can, closing around the handle of the can with the unconscious certainty of a hand reaching for a thing that was always there.

The handle was molded into the shell, a recessed grip at the top of the torpedo shape that accommodated four fingers and allowed the can to be held in one hand while swimming, the grip that was the connection, the physical link between the guard and the tool, the point of contact that the hand had memorized, the specific width and depth of the grip that the fingers fit into without looking, without searching, the way a key fit into a lock, the way a foot fit into a shoe, the mechanical correspondence between the hand's shape and the handle's shape that was the design's achievement, the achievement being the instancy, the immediacy, the zero-time-cost of grabbing the can during a rescue when the seconds were the currency and the currency was the life.

The towline was twenty feet of three-eighths-inch nylon rope, bright yellow, attached to the can's rear by a stainless steel clip and to the harness by a second clip. The towline was the tether, the leash, the connection that allowed the guard to push the can toward the victim and maintain control of the can from a distance, the distance that was the safety margin, the margin between the guard and the victim that the training required because the victim in the active phase of drowning would grab, would clutch, would seize the nearest floating thing with a force that exceeded the victim's normal strength, the force that was not muscular but neurological, the body's emergency override, the survival reflex that the adrenaline powered and that the panic directed and that the training said: do not be the thing that is grabbed, put the can between you and the victim, let the can be grabbed, the can does not drown, the can does not panic, the can does not go under when the victim climbs onto it, the can is the intermediary, the buffer, the thing that absorbs the victim's panic without transmitting the panic to the rescuer.

James had replaced the towline on his primary can six times in twenty years. The replacement was a function of the UV degradation, the sun breaking down the nylon's molecular structure over the course of a season, the photolytic process that weakened the rope from within, the deterioration that was invisible to the eye but palpable to the fingers, the fingers that ran the line through the hands every morning during the inspection and that detected the roughening, the subtle change in texture from smooth to granular that was the nylon's way of saying: I am weakening, I am losing the tensile strength that the label promised when the line was new, the 850-pound breaking strength that was now 700, now 600, now the number that was too close to the number that the rescue would demand, because the rescue demanded the full strength, the complete strength, the strength that did not fail when the victim was on the can and the guard was swimming and the current was pulling and the whole system -- guard, line, can, victim -- was under the load that the drowning produced, the load that was not theoretical but actual, not calculated but experienced, the load that James had felt through the harness in two hundred saves, the pull of the person on the can transmitted through the line to the harness to the body, the pull that said: hold, hold, do not let go, the holding being the rescue, the rescue being the line, the line being the thing that must not break.

The paddle board was ten feet six inches long. Yellow fiberglass, flat-bottomed, with a skeg at the rear for tracking and a recessed deck for the victim and padded rails for the guard's hands. The paddle board was the distance tool, the rescue device for the swimmer who was too far out for a swimming rescue, the swimmer at three hundred yards, four hundred yards, the swimmer who had drifted beyond the range that the guard's body could cover in the time the drowning allowed, the distance that exceeded the body's speed and that required the augmentation of the board, the board that skimmed the surface at twice the speed of the swimming body and that arrived at the victim with the remaining energy that the swimming body would not have had, the energy to stabilize the victim, to pull the victim onto the deck, to paddle the victim shoreward with the broad efficient strokes that the kneeling position allowed.

James had used the paddle board seven times in twenty years. Seven saves out of two hundred and fourteen. The seven were the distance rescues, the long-range events, the rescues that began with the swimmer too far from shore for the can and that required the board and the paddling and the specific skill of a prone or kneeling rescue that was different from the swimming rescue, that used different muscles, different technique, the upper body doing the work that the whole body did in the swimming rescue, the arms and the shoulders and the torso powering the paddle strokes while the legs stabilized the board, the body's resources allocated differently, distributed differently, the same purpose -- reach the person, bring the person back -- achieved by different means.

The board was stored on the ATV's roof rack, strapped down with two nylon web straps and two cam buckles, the storage that kept the board accessible and protected and that allowed the ATV to deliver the board to any point on the beach in sixty seconds, the sixty seconds being the deployment time, the time from the guard's decision to use the board to the board's arrival at the waterline, and the sixty seconds included the unstrapping and the carrying and the launching, the sequence of actions that the training had refined to a protocol and the protocol had refined to a habit and the habit had refined to an instinct, the instinct that put the board in the water in sixty seconds without the thinking, without the deciding, the body performing the sequence the way the body performed the swimming, by repetition, by practice, by the ten thousand rehearsals that turned the conscious action into the unconscious action.

The spinal immobilization board was made of high-density polyethylene, orange, six feet two inches long, with eighteen hand-holes along the perimeter and three cross-straps and a head immobilizer. The spinal board was the tool of the worst scenario that was not the drowning but the injury, the spinal cord injury, the diving accident, the neck injury from a wave, the body hitting the bottom at the wrong angle, the angle that compressed the cervical vertebrae and that threatened the cord and that required the immobilization, the absolute stillness of the spine that the board provided, the rigid platform that the injured body was strapped to in the water before the body was brought to shore, because the bringing to shore without the immobilization was the risk, the risk of the secondary injury, the movement of the fractured vertebra compressing the cord that the fracture had not yet compressed, the movement that could turn the injury from the recoverable to the permanent, from the broken-but-healable to the broken-and-paralyzed.

James had used the spinal board four times. Four times in twenty years he had entered the water with the board under his arm and had slid it under a person whose body was in the water and whose spine was possibly compromised and whose moving was possibly the ending, the ending of the walking and the standing and the running and the swimming, the ending of the body's mobility that the spinal cord's integrity made possible and that the injury threatened and that the board was designed to protect, the rigid orange shield between the injury and the consequence.

The four times were four different days, four different bodies, four different injuries, and the four had three things in common: the time, which was measured in seconds, the seconds between the injury and the immobilization during which every motion was a risk and the risk was the paralysis; the water, which was the medium the board had to function in, the medium that moved and pulled and that wanted to move the body and that the board was meant to prevent from moving the body; and the outcome, which in all four cases was the transport, the strapping, the carrying to shore, the ambulance, the hospital, the cervical collar, the imaging, the assessment, and in three of the four cases the clearance, the spinal cord intact, the vertebrae not fractured, the immobilization having been unnecessary but having been correct, having been the protocol, the protocol that said: immobilize first, assess later, because the immobilizing of an uninjured spine cost nothing but the not-immobilizing of an injured spine cost everything, the everything being the walking, and the walking was not a thing a person should lose because a lifeguard on a beach skipped a step.

The fourth case was not a clearance. The fourth case was a seventeen-year-old boy who dove into a wave in 2014 and hit the bottom with his forehead and compressed his C5 vertebra and who was in the water, face-down, when James reached him, and the face-down was the emergency, the face-down being both the drowning and the injury, the two things happening simultaneously, the boy drowning because the boy was face-down and the boy injured because the boy's spine was compressed and the two things required contradictory responses -- the drowning required the turning, the flipping of the body to put the face above the water, and the injury required the not-turning, the stillness, the immobilization that the turning violated. James turned him. James turned him because the drowning was the immediate threat and the spinal injury was the delayed threat and the immediate threat had to be addressed before the delayed threat could be managed, the triage that said: air first, spine second, life first, mobility second, the hierarchy of the body's needs that placed breathing above walking and the breathing was the turning and the turning was the risk and the risk was taken and the boy breathed and the boy was immobilized on the board and the boy was transported and the boy was diagnosed with a C5 compression fracture that had not severed the cord, that had bruised the cord, that had produced a temporary paralysis that resolved over four months of rehabilitation and that the boy recovered from, fully, completely, the walking restored, the walking that had been at risk, the walking that the board and the transport and the hospital had preserved, and James's turning, the turning that had violated the immobilization protocol, was the thing that had kept the boy alive to be immobilized, the violation that was the saving, the protocol broken in the service of the life.

The ATV was a Honda FourTrax Foreman, red, four-wheel drive, with a first aid kit mounted on the rear rack and a PA speaker mounted on the front rack and a radio mounted on the handlebars and the paddle board strapped to the roof rack that the patrol's mechanic had welded from aluminum tubing in 2018. The ATV was the transport, the rapid-response vehicle, the machine that carried the guard and the equipment to the point of need along a mile of beach that the running could not cover fast enough, the mile that at a sprint would take four minutes and that at ATV speed took forty-five seconds, the difference being the three minutes and fifteen seconds that was the difference, in some rescues, between the save and the loss.

James drove the ATV the way he drove the truck -- competently, without affection, as a tool. The ATV was not the board and not the can and not the whistle. The ATV was not a rescue device but a delivery system, the machine that put the rescue device and the rescuer in position, the logistics of the rescue rather than the rescue itself. James did not love the ATV. James loved the can. James loved the can the way a carpenter loved a hammer, the specific affection of a craftsman for the tool that was most essential, most fundamental, most closely matched to the work the craftsman did. The can was the tool that entered the water with him, the tool that was in his hands when the hands did the thing, the tool that the drowning person grabbed and held and that held the drowning person above the surface while James swam them to shore, the tool that was the bridge, the intermediary, the thing between the person and the water.

The radio was a Motorola XPR 7550e, digital, waterproof to IP68 standard, which meant submersion to two meters for thirty minutes, which meant the radio could go in the water with the guard and come out of the water with the guard and still function, still transmit, still carry the voice from the guard to the base station to the other guards to the dispatch to the ambulance, the chain of communication that the rescue depended on because the rescue was not a solo act but a coordinated response, a system of positions and movements and decisions that required the transmission of information from the person who had the information to the person who needed the information, and the radio was the transmission, the voice across the distance, the captain's word carried from Stand 4 to Stand 1 in the time it took the speed of light to cover a mile, the instantaneous delivery of the instruction that said: go, swim, the person is in your zone, the person is drowning, the drowning is now.

Channel six for patrol operations. Channel nine for dispatch. The two frequencies that organized the patrol's communication into the two categories -- the internal and the external, the patrol talking to itself and the patrol talking to the world, the two conversations that ran simultaneously during a rescue, channel six carrying the guard-to-guard coordination and channel nine carrying the guard-to-hospital notification, the two channels being the two tracks of the emergency, the tactical and the strategic, the what-are-we-doing and the what-do-we-need.

James's radio callsign was Four. Stand Four. The callsign that was the number that was the stand that was the position that was the identity, the Four that meant James Calloway the way the Four meant Stand 4, the conflation of the person and the position that the radio produced, the reduction of the man to the number that the communication protocol required and that the man accepted because the accepting was the professionalism and the professionalism was the thing, the thing that said: on the radio I am not James, I am Four, and Four is the captain, and the captain is the voice, and the voice is the instruction, and the instruction is the rescue.

He keyed the radio with his left thumb. Always the left thumb, because the right hand held the can or the board or the steering of the ATV, the right hand doing the rescue and the left hand doing the communication, the bilateral division of labor that the body had organized around the two primary tasks, the saving and the telling, the physical rescue and the verbal coordination, the two hemispheres of the work allocated to the two sides of the body, the right and the left, the doing and the saying.

The whistle was a Fox 40 Classic, pealess, 115 decibels, yellow plastic, black lanyard, eighteen grams, and the whistle was not equipment in the way the can and the board and the radio were equipment. The whistle was the voice. The whistle was the captain's authority made audible, the compressed air that the lungs produced and that the three chambers amplified and that the sound carried across the beach and into the ears of the guards and the swimmers and the people on the sand who heard the sound and who understood, even if they did not know the code, even if they did not know that three blasts meant emergency and two blasts meant attention and one blast meant all clear, who understood from the sound itself, from the urgency of the pitch and the volume of the tone, that the sound meant something, that the sound was not random but intentional, that a person had produced the sound and the person had produced it for a reason and the reason was the water, the reason was always the water.

These were the tools. These were the things the guard carried and the guard used and the guard maintained and the guard depended on in the seconds between the seeing and the saving, the seconds that were the rescue, the seconds during which the body and the tools and the training and the twenty years of daily practice converged on a single point in the water where a person was drowning and the convergence was the thing, the convergence was the rescue, the rescue being the moment when every piece of equipment and every hour of training and every morning of inspection met the moment of need and the meeting was the save.

James checked the equipment every morning. He checked the cans and the board and the radio and the ATV and the spinal board and the oxygen kit and the first aid supplies and the beach wheelchairs and the flags and the whistles and the towlines and the straps and the buckles and the batteries and the tires and every other piece of equipment that the patrol used, and the checking was the ritual, the morning ritual that preceded the morning meeting that preceded the stands opening that preceded the scanning that preceded the day, the ritual that said: the equipment is ready, the equipment is functional, the equipment will not fail, or if it fails it will fail because the conditions exceeded the equipment's capacity and not because the equipment was not checked, not because the morning was skipped, not because the inspection was omitted, not because the guard assumed the equipment was fine because the equipment had been fine yesterday and the fine-yesterday was the assumption and the assumption was the risk and the risk was the thing the checking eliminated, the morning checking, the daily checking, the ritual checking that was the discipline, that was the professionalism, that was the guard's promise to the equipment and the equipment's promise to the guard and both promises being the promise to the swimmer, the swimmer who did not know about the checking and who did not think about the checking and who entered the water trusting that if the water took them the guard would come and the guard would bring the tools and the tools would work, and the working of the tools was the keeping of the promise, and the keeping of the promise was the morning, and the morning was the checking, and the checking was the thing.