scarred half an angry red. But his eyes were still wide and he was flapping with one arm, trying to stay on top in the oxygen while the white water tried to drown him. I went to a breast stroke and got into the same swell with him and yelled his name. There was no recognition in his face but he saw hope and grabbed for it.
I’d learned enough about water rescues to keep a struggling swimmer off your body. If you let them get a choke hold, you were both going down. I grabbed his wrist when he reached for me and held him at arm’s length.
“OK Rodrigo!” I yelled. “You’re OK, you’re OK!”
I was looking to find his other arm when a wave broke over both our heads. While we were under I reached for his other arm and held it. When we both cleared the white water Rodrigo was screaming in pain like he’d been hooked with a sharp barb and I realized the arm I’d grabbed was hanging limp.
“Broke, Mr. Max! Broke, broke,” he spit out, his face twisted in agony and I let go of the arm.
“OK, OK. Let me pull you, Rodrigo. Let me pull!”
He may have understood me or maybe he went into shock but I was able to hook him under the pit of his good arm and turn his back so it was on my hip and I began sidestroking for shore. The waves had no rhythm and in the white water it felt like all I was doing was pulling at air bubbles and getting nowhere. I was breathing heavily and trying to scissor kick each time a wave pushed us, and then I’d rest when it left us bogged down in the swell. It seemed like thirty minutes and I started counting strokes to give myself a goal.
In the middle of my second count to fifty I felt my right foot touch the ocean floor and the next wave pushed both of us onto solid sand. I struggled with Rodrigo’s sudden weight and then heard yelling, “We got you, man! We got you!” and we were suddenly surrounded by hands and arms and other bodies in the water around us.
“Watch his arm, watch his arm, it’s broke,” I said as two men took Rodrigo from me and I felt another strong arm around my own waist.
“Oh, shit, man and his leg, too, watch his leg, man!” another voice said.
On the beach there was a red-and-white rescue truck with a red gumball light spinning on its roof and the lifeguards lay Rodrigo down in the lee side out of the wind and had me sit beside him. The little Filipino had an unnatural lump in the side of his arm where his bicep should have been and from the thigh of his left leg a stark white splinter of bone was protruding, blood trickling from the gash and mixing with the water and running a spiderweb of red down through the hair on his leg. One of the guards wrapped a blanket around the leg and someone draped one over my shoulders.
While my heartbeat tripped down I heard the sound of a siren growing and two of the guards brought out a backboard, strapped Rodrigo onto it, and then carried him to the street end, where an ambulance was backing up to the bulkhead. After they took him away a guard crouched down next to me. It was Amsler, the guard whose chinning bar I used.
“You want a ride to the E.R., Mr. Freeman? Let them check you out?”
“No,” I said. “I’m all right. Swallowed a little salt water is all but thanks, thanks for helping out. You, uh, know what hospital they’re taking that guy to?”
“Probably North Broward,” he said. “Man, I’ve never seen anyone break bones like that in the surf. That guy was messed up.”
“Yeah,” I said, “he was.”
When I stood I could see up over the Royal Flamingo’s bulkhead where the group of women whose call for help had set me off was talking with a uniformed Broward sheriff’s office deputy. One of the women pointed to me and the cop looked up. I didn’t recognize him. He was writing on a pad that looked like a reporter’s notebook and the pages were flapping in the wind. I started toward the bottom of the stairs as he passed out cards to the women and by the time I reached the top he was heading for me.