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Breath! Air! Air! Breathe. She fought up, fought the water, kept shut her mouth, fighting the fatal instinct. Do not breathe, not yet. Only training, and the memory of it, the ruthless drill kept it shut. Then she felt air, of a kind. Wet air, but still air. She opened, breathed, sucked it in before the next wave hit, slamming her down again.

She let it roll her, felt its energy weakening, fought up, breathed again, heard the roar behind her. A big one, she tried to straighten her body, to fly with it. It slammed her down. She felt the shore beneath her. Searing pain as her shoulder slammed into it. The wave rolled over, she pushed up, felt the sand beneath her feet. She ran, pummeling her legs against the shore, racing to beat the next wave. It caught her, smashed her down again. She forced herself up, legs burning, just raw survival, the fumes of it driving her on, then she was out, free of the sea.

The rain and wind whipped her. She was shivering so much she could hardly move. On to the house, to the huge structure before her. Legs shuddering. She struggled to make each step. The commands from her head were only intermittently transmitting to her body. She forced herself on, closed on the house. The wind had done its job. A window was smashed. She stepped in. Cold, so cold. Her whole body was spasming. Phone. She saw a landline. Rang the number her mind gave her.

Her lips wouldn’t move. She grabbed them, rubbed them, tried again. “Dan,” she managed to say.

“Boudy! Thank God! Where are you? What’s happened?”

She tried to speak “… choppr … ree mi—ou t’sea … swam.…” The words came out slurred, half formed. She searched on the desk, found headed notepaper, read out the address, the zip code, struggled over the code, repeating it again and again till Dan understood, repeated it back right.