Three minutes: Drowning

Super Bowl Sunday, Linda just wanted to get home after an exhausting shift. Instead she drove her car into the river. The lesson: You can survive three minutes without air.

Linda was in her car on the way home. Already the evening has been tiring, working in the countryside bar, serving beer and shots to the cheering audience. Super Bowl Sunday, the same procedure every year. It was hard to keep the beer flowing to satisfy the demand. Sandy, her colleague, got unexpectedly sick and had to leave on a short notice so Linda had to work double this time. When finally the home team won she nearly collapsed inside. Now the hours of shots and cheesy remarks about her butts and tits were about to begin. Some hard core fans always staid until her boss gave the the signal to kick them out as politely as possible. It was already in the morning hours when she finally could sit in her car in front of the bar and light her first cigarette. When she opened her eyes again the cigarette had already burnt away half. She lowered the window and snipped the pile of ash outside. "Tired as hell", she concluded. Linda considered for a short moment to head back to the bar again and drink a coffee first, but that would mean to spend even more time in this place.

So she decided to drive home as fast as possible and legal. The country lane to her home lay beside a broad river, half hour drive. She should make it when she left the window open and the radio blasting. She didn't care which radio station, just anything to keep her distracted from the monotony of the night drive. After some minutes she suddenly came to her senses by the rumbling of her right tires grinding over the grass at the side of the country lane. She shook herself awake and began to bite in her lower lip. The pain should keep her awake, she just wanted to hit her bed. Her fists clenched in the steering wheel when she glanced at the dark river on her right. There had been stories of unfortunate ones who steered their cars right into the river, most of them were drunk and used the less frequented country lane to avoid the cops. Linda just wanted to get home the shortest way, hitting the bed. Thinking of the fresh pillow that awaited her, made her comfortable. The rush of adrenaline was ebbing slowly giving way for bedtime fantasies. This time she would even skip the shower she thought. She always prepared a fresh bed before Super Sundays to just wash off the shift and crawl into the fresh bed. The only comfort after such a day, her bed.

Her seat belt ripped her body back and all she could perceive was the terrible impact and blurry images of her legs and the wet windscreen after her head was thrown back to the headrest. "Oh S**t" she stated when she realized that the water was already pouring in through the open windscreen. In her panic she turned frantically the handle of her windscreen but the water was pouring in so fast! Horrified, she watched the absurd race between the water level and the edge of her windscreen. At least she managed to catch an air bubble in the roof of the car when the window finally slid shut. While her car was now peacefully descending to the bottom of the river she tried to reach the bubble of air above her. The seat belt that saved her before from losing her consciousness at the impact and sparing her some severe head injuries now held her back. "Calm down you hysterical b***h!" she shouted silently at herself. Her self insult had a sobering and calming effect on her mind. She made herself aware that she had to unfasten her seat belt to be able to reach the air bubble on top, only the width of her hand away from her mouth. Her lungs already began to burn slightly, she exhaled as she learned it in her teenage years. Once she was as a talented rescue swimmer and diver. Exhaling to get rid of the excess carbon dioxide in her body and ease the burning. During this she fumbled for the release of her seat belt - and it clicked! Now free she could rise a bit and place her mouth in the air bubble. It was only big enough to let her rise the front of her face in it, letting her breathe through her mouth and nostrils. Her body was pumping adrenaline, her heart was beating fast and she was breathing too fast she realized. She tried to calm her breathing to a steady rhythm and not to swallow too much water that would make her cough. Time was running out, she knew that the air bubble was so small that she had to act soon. She reached down her left arm and tried to turn the handle of the windscreen. Relieved she noticed that it still seemed to work. So she took a deep breath before turning it. The window lowered, letting the air bubble slip out of the car. Linda was confident that she could make the dive to the top.

When the window was completely open she floated out. She was shrouded in complete darkness so she had to get a sense first where was up. She adjusted herself towards the assumed surface and pushed with her right leg against the car door. Suddenly her upward movement was interrupted by a jerk on her left leg. She felt with her hands and discovered that her left foot was entangled with the seat belt, she tried to untangle it by ripping on it. But with no result, the belt that should save lives simply clenched to her foot like a cruel final joke. Panic set in again. Desperately she tried to shake it off. Her lungs began burning again. She knew when she would release the air now to give her relief, there would be only water left to suck in. "Belt cutter!" she remembered the belt cutter her dad had given her years ago to release her in case she was trapped in a car accident. Back then she thought it was ridiculous, since rescue teams would always arrive to an accident site and do the job of freeing her, but to do the old man the favor she kept it. "It must still be in the in the glove box." She prayed that this was true and turned around again to dive headfirst back in the car. Her lungs were burning like fire now and her body began to have convulsions. She opened the glove box and ripped everything out that felt soft. Something hard turned out to be an emergency flashlight, also from her dad but with little use now. The next hard thing she could feel had finally the distinctive shape of the belt cutter. She had to breathe out! It was unbearable to keep her lungs full of fire. So she let out half before she began to apply the cutter. It worked it way through the fabric of the belt. "Too slow!" she thought when finally the cutter got through. But it seemed that the belt formed a tight knot around her ankle so she had to cut the other end loose too. "No air!" she thought desperately when already stars began to flash in her vision. Then she remembered a movie scene she saw years ago. "Tires have air!" shot through her head. This last hope gave her enough willpower and clarity to manage to dive out of the cabin again while releasing her last breath. She felt her way to the front tire interrupted by a convulsion and her shaking hands trying to feel the rubber. Fortunately the belt released her leg now far enough that she could reach the tire. She patted the inside of the wheel for the valve. She unscrew the cap but no air came out. "Release valve!" was all she could think through the burning, the sparkling stars in her vision and the desire to just take a deep breath of water. She reached for a bobby pin in her hair and lost it. "Calm!" she tried to convince herself. She reached for the second bobby pin and could hold it. She pushed it in the valve and a sacred stream of air bubbles welcomed her. She reached her mouth over the valve and gleefully sucked in the air with water. This made her cough violently but gave her enough hope to steady herself and form a makeshift tube with her hand between the valve and her lips. Now she could suck in deep. Air. Now this mundane stuff was so precious and rewarding! Slowly the stars in her vision faded to blackness and the burning got less and the convulsions ceased. She exhaled deeply, the tire still felt well filled. She sucked in a second time and enjoyed the comfort of a lung full of air. She exhaled again and permitted herself the luxury of sucking in a third time. Now she could steady herself and was thankful that she had enough sense to tuck the belt cutter in a pocket of her jeans. She took it out and began to cut the second part of the seat belt. Finally she was free and could drift to the surface now. The plentiful supply of air made her relaxed and calm enough that she could rest a moment and make sure where up was. Now she kicked herself toward the surface. She surfaced just a few seconds later. Immediately she headed for the shore of the river. Her car did plunge not too far from the shore into the water.

When she finally reached the shore she crawled onto land until she was sure to have something solid supporting her body. She turned around. She saw the stars, this time in the sky. Laughing and crying the same time uncontrollably when she saw the sky she just thought: "Thank you daddy!"

Author's Note

This story emerged from the idea to write some stories around the theme of 'survival rules'. Three minutes without air, three day without water, three weeks without food and so on. However I wrote only one so far.