her arm and around her. I pulled her out from behind the wheel and toward the passenger seat. We were up to our necks in water now. I reached back with my free hand, felt for and found the door handle. When I pulled it, and pushed back, the door wouldn’t open. What was it now?-- the pressure had to be equalized. That was it. There was still too much air in the compartment. I held her close to me and made sure her head was tilted backward so that she could breathe. I rested while the water inched higher. The car must have been totally submerged by now. It must have been sinking deeper and deeper, though I couldn’t feel its downward movement. Okay, this is it, I told myself. I set my feet on the side of the seat, and pressed by back flat against the door. As I started to straighten my legs, the door opened a crack, and water gushed in to displace what little air there was left in the car. I clamped my free hand over Eliza’s mouth, and pinched her nose in the crook of my thumb. I pushed with my legs as hard as I could, and finally the door swung open, and the air that was left in the car escaped. I couldn’t see a thing in the murky water, but felt that we were floating upward. It was impossible to guess how deep we were. It seemed like I’d held my breath for hours by the time we broke the surface of the water. I gasped for air, and Eliza, too, though unconscious, took in a gulp. She coughed a bit, and moaned, and I thought she was coming to, but then her head lolled sideways, with her face pressed against my neck. I looked around, then, and I saw that we were right in the middle of the reservoir. Suddenly, as if for no reason at all, we began to sink. At first, I couldn’t understand what was happening; it was as though, in the excitement of the situation, I lost most of my memory. Finally, it came back to me: I DIDN’T KNOW HOW TO SWIM! I started to flail my free arm wildly, which made us dip underwater briefly. My mind started screaming at me, don’t panic-- don’t panic. That’s the worst thing you can do. Just kick your legs-- that’ll keep you afloat. And then pull the water toward you with your free hand-- that’ll move to the edge of the water. Sure enough, it worked. It wasn’t pretty or fast, but we crept to the edge of the water. I was doing something that was a sort of like a backstroke. When we reached the rocky side where the water ended, my feet felt some big stones underwater, and I used them like steps, climbing out of the water, with Eliza draped over my shoulder. There was a narrow path that led upward to level area where the trees began. I could barely move my legs as I labored up the path. I set Eliza on the ground, with her back resting against the trunk of one of the trees. I leaned over her and checked to make sure she was breathing all right. She actually sounded better than I did; I had a vague wheeze, and I never felt so exhausted in my life. When I stood straight up, I actually felt dizzy and terribly sick. I knelt on the ground next to her, and tried to catch my breath. Now that we were safe, my adrenalin had stopped flowing, and as it stopped, I began to feel worse and worse. I had a sharp pain in my right side, I noticed then, and I looked down and saw where blood had soaked through my shirt. What?… I was confused at the sight of the red splotch. When I lifted my shirt, I saw the piece of metal; it was thin and silver and poked out a couple inches from a jagged wound. At first, it looked like part of an arrow, and then I recognized it for what it was: a piece of metal trim, probably from the car door. When I felt my lower back, I found the nub that was the other end of the trim. It had gone straight through, maybe when I was pushing against the door to open it underwater. I couldn’t imagine how it had happened-- it must have been a fluke. Whatever the case, I wondered how much blood I’d lost, and whether the metal went through any vital organs. For the first time in my
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