Building a swimmer

After the accident, Douglas avoided water whenever he could. For years the haunting fear stayed with him. When he went fishing, canoeing or swimming in the rivers and lakes of the Cascades, the terror came back and ruined his fun: it paralysed his legs and gripped his heart.

So, one October, he decided to get an instructor and learn to swim. He went to a pool and practised five days a week, an hour each day. The instructor built a swimmer piece by piece:

• First, he put a belt around Douglas, attached to a rope that ran through a pulley overhead, and held the end. He made Douglas swim back and forth across the pool, hour after hour, for weeks. Each time, a little of the terror came back, but it slowly went away. After three months, the tension began to ease.
• Then he taught him to put his face under water and exhale, and to raise his nose and inhale, hundreds of times, to get rid of the panic of going under.
• Next, holding the side of the pool, Douglas kicked with his legs, again for weeks, until they relaxed.
• Finally, the instructor put the pieces together, and taught him to swim. By April, Douglas could swim a full length of the pool.

Even then he was not sure. He went on testing himself. He swam alone in the pool, again and again. He swam two miles across Lake Wentworth in New Hampshire. Only once, in the middle of the lake, did the old terror come back in miniature, when he put his face under and saw nothing but bottomless water. He laughed and said, 'Well, Mr Terror, what do you think you can do to me?' It fled, and he swam on. Still he had doubts, so finally he went to Warm Lake, dived in, and swam to the other shore and back. He shouted with joy: the fear was gone, and he was free.