When I awoke for the second time, I was feeling
monumentally improved, I had some strength back and I was
actively aware of my surroundings. This time the nurse, whose
name was Karen, helped me sit up, handed me a cup of hot
soup and began to explain what had happened. As it turned
out Acker had nearly killed me. When the storm warning that
I had thought so little about went out across the deck, Acker
had gone into a full blown panic and taken it upon himself to
haul me up and to “safety” as fast as possible. When Edderman
heard me on the radio panicking he had charged outside,
deployed Birdman, and grabbed my line out of Acker’s hands
and dropped me some 20 feet. What followed was a hurried
emergency decompression/recompression which landed me in
the hyperbaric chamber for a week, and I had just woken up on
day three.
The aftermath of the incident went by in a blur, lots of
MRI’s and being poked and prodded by various doctors and
psychologists. In the end the incident prompted me to leave
the diving industry and return home to Washington, where
struggling with PTSD and nerve damage the desire for
familiar and comforting territory was strong to say nothing of
the support of family. The repercussions of the incident were