Yellowstone Standoff. Scott Graham
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movements grew clumsy and robotic, and she sank in the water until only her mouth and nose showed above the surface. By the time Chuck drew within twenty feet of her, only the top of her head remained visible above the surface of the lake, her fingers floundering weakly at the waves.
The cold knotted Chuck’s legs as he churned toward Kaifong. She sank from sight. He swam, his gaze fixed on the spot where she’d disappeared. A wave slapped the side of his head, filling his ear with freezing water. He drew air into his lungs, forcing them to expand.
He reached the place where he’d last seen her. She hung suspended in the clear water below him, four feet beneath the surface, her outstretched arms speckled by the sun, her black hair floating like seaweed around her head and shoulders. Even as he spotted her, she sank deeper, her body still, her fingers curled inward.
Chuck porpoised out of the water and dove. He stretched his arms down against the buoyancy of his PFD but missed Kaifong by inches before the life jacket shot him back to the surface.
He sucked a mouthful of air, the cold settling in his bones. The diesel engine roared as the boat, having completed its arc, raced back. Kaifong was deeper now, slipping away.
He cursed. The PFD trapped him at the surface. He unclipped the three buckles at the front of the life jacket, his fingers stiff and unwieldy, raised his arms, and sank out of the shoulders of the jacket and beneath the surface of the lake. Snagging one of the PFD’s dangling straps with his left hand, he dove again, plunging his right hand downward, his eyes fixed on Kaifong below.
Twelve inches away. Six inches. Clinging with his other hand to the strap of his life jacket, he reached the extent of his dive when the PFD, acting as a cork atop the water, halted his descent.
Kaifong continued to sink below him.
He clawed at the water while holding his breath, his cheeks bulging. If he took the time to return to the surface for more air, he would lose Kaifong to the depths.
He stretched full out, scrabbling with his fingers, but Kaifong was too far away.
He couldn’t release the PFD, lest he follow Kaifong into the depths.
One last, desperate idea occurred to him. He spun his body and shoved his feet toward the surface. Slipping one boot through the shoulder strap of his PFD and hooking the ankle of his other foot around the strap, he secured his feet in place. Battling the urge to breathe, his vision blurring, he strained toward Kaifong’s suspended body with both hands.
His fingers swept past her. Missed. She was too deep.
But the motion of his hands created an underwater wave that pressed the floating tendrils of her hair against her head, then lifted them toward him in a rebound.
Chuck jabbed his hands into the depths, his feet locked to the PFD, his lungs screaming. He grasped a few strands of Kaifong’s hair and tugged upward. The strands ripped free from her scalp, but not before the action lifted her body a few inches in the water.
He grabbed a handful of her hair, now within reach, and swam upward, the last of the air in his depleted lungs bubbling from his nostrils. He broke the surface of the lake and gasped, sucking oxygen into his seizing chest.
He looped his free arm through a strap of his life jacket and hoisted Kaifong to the surface beside him. Her head fell backward, her wan face to the sky, her lips blue and slack.
“Breathe,” Chuck pleaded, clutching Kaifong. “Please. Breathe.”
The whites of her eyes showed between her eyelids. Blood vessels, purple against her blanched skin, spiderwebbed her cheeks.
Chuck held her at the surface as his own strength waned. She hung limp in his arms.
The boat powered up to Chuck and Kaifong. Its engine chunked hard into reverse, then idled as the boat drifted alongside them. The pilot appeared at the gunwale, her face white. Randall and Clarence lifted Kaifong over the railing. Chuck clung to his PFD until they dragged him into the boat seconds later.
He lay on his back in the open stern of the vessel, vaguely aware of Janelle crouched over him. “I’m okay,” he told her, his teeth chattering. He aimed a shaking finger at Kaifong, on her back beside him. “Her.”
Janelle reached beneath Kaifong’s neck and gently lifted, opening the airway, then locked her hands together and compressed Kaifong’s chest in a steady rhythm. She counted out loud with each compression. “One, two, three...”
Randall knelt at the other side of Kaifong.
“Two breaths after every fifteen compressions,” Janelle instructed him.
He hesitated.
“Now,” she commanded. “Pinch her nose. Keep her chin lifted so her airway stays open.”
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