Page 81 of Lost Truth
“I’m going back.” He swam away in a powerful crawl.
Hayden probably should’ve insisted Gabe get back in the boat to warm up before trying to save someone else, but his teammate wouldn’t have listened. If someone was depending on Hayden to help, he wouldn’t listen either.
Jude returned with a young boy and lifted him up to Hayden. Before he could question the strength Jude had left to return for someone else, he’d turned and swam away.
Hayden grabbed another emergency blanket and placed the boy beside the woman. She exclaimed something Hayden couldn’t understand and quickly wrapped an arm around the child. Hayden had hoped she was the boy’s mother, but even though she was clearly relieved to see him, he could tell he wasn’t her son.
Please, Father, please let his mother or father be rescued too. Don’t leave him as an orphan.
He kept watching over the area, seeing deputies pulling people into their boat as well. He had no idea how many victims had been rescued, but five people were still in the water. Had the number dwindled because they’d been rescued, or had some succumbed to the choppy waves and cold?
“No! Leave me!” A woman screamed at Gabe as she flapped her hands at the water. “My baby. I just lost him. Find him.”
“I’ll move the searchlight to them.” Sawyer grabbed the handle of the mounted light, and the beam skated over the water, highlighting Gabe and the area around him.
Something bobbed on the far edges of the light. Sawyer aimed it more carefully, revealing an infant floating on the water. Gabe left the woman and swam arm over arm toward the baby.
“Get this boat in closer to him,” Hayden demanded.
Sawyer reacted immediately, revving the idling motor. He couldn’t risk moving too fast and churning up the water, so they inched toward the woman, Gabe, and her baby. Felt like an eternity passed before they got close enough to help. Sawyer reversed thrust on the motor, piloting them to a stop nearby.
Gabe was two arm’s lengths away from the child, when the child disappeared in the water. He roared in anguish and surged ahead faster, arm over arm, pummeling the water.
He dove into the wave.
Hayden held his breath and started counting in his brain. One one-hundred. Two one-hundred. Three one-hundred. Four one-hundred. Five one-hundred. He reached fifteen when Gabe surfaced with the baby in his arms.
The woman screamed and reached for the boy.
“No!” Gabe shouted. It probably tore him apart, but he knew the baby’s best chance was in the boat. He passed the child to Hayden, who lifted him gently, laid him on a cushion, and quickly assessed him.
He wasn’t breathing.
Panic surged through Hayden, but his first-aid training kicked in. He gently turned the baby’s head to the side and began chest compressions. He’d never performed CPR on an infant before and feared he might hurt him, but he knew he had to press firmly enough to restart the tiny heart.
Reece set down her weapon and came to his side. “I’ll take over when you get tired.”
Maybe he would tire of CPR on an adult, but only using his fingers, he could continue for a long time. He wanted to continue. He couldn’t go in the water himself and wanted to be the one to bring this child back to life.
“Some help here,” Gabe called out from the side of the boat.
“I got him,” Reece said.
Offering no more than a nod, Hayden kept pressing the child’s chest. The baby suddenly coughed, water spewing from his lungs. He coughed again. More water. Hayden’s heart soared as he turned the baby over in his hands so he could more easily expel the water.
The coughing subsided, and the baby started screaming. The most glorious sound Hayden had heard in his life. He grabbed a blanket and wrapped up the red-faced infant.
“My baby.” The rescued woman charged him, her eyes frantically going to the child. “Míngzé. Míngzé.”
Tears streaming down her cheeks, she took her baby from Hayden’s hands and collapsed onto the bench. She held the child close, rocking and cooing in the language all mothers knew.
Hayden retrieved another blanket and circled it around her shoulders, then the other woman moved to them and put her arm around the mother. She looked up at Hayden. “Thank you. Thank Jesus.”
Gabe sank to the floor beside them and shivered in the cold. “Good. He made it.”
Reece encased Gabe in a blanket, too, and enveloped him in her arms. She gave him a big kiss on the cheek. “I’ve never been so proud of you in my life.”
Gabe didn’t respond but continued to look at the woman and her child.
