Typical Day
A wave crashes into the side of the large boat that's been Pete's home for three days (and is supposed to be for two days more). Pete grips the sides of his bunk and closes his eyes. He takes a deep breath and counts to ten. Eventually, the rocking stops, and his heartbeat slows.
It isn't seasickness that keeps Pete on edge. It's his crushing fear of deep water—a strange affliction for a commercial diver, to be sure, but all the same, here he is on the Pacific for a five-day job performing routine maintenance on an underwater pipeline.
Pete never meant to end up here. When his girlfriend, Cassie, discovered his phobia, she pressured him into the "face your fears" coping approach. It started with an Olympic-sized pool, and when that didn't work, it was scuba diving. When that didn't work, it was deep sea diving. During all of this fear-facing, Pete happened into a series of diving certifications that he never thought he'd need. Then he lost his day job. Then Cassie broke up with him. And so here he is, doing a job he's accidentally good at, and worrying every minute of it.
Pete doesn't try to go back to sleep. Sure, the wave woke him up, but it was just about time to get up anyway. He has what he's sure is going to be about a ten- or eleven-hour day ahead of him, and the sooner he gets started, the sooner he can get back aboard the boat.
He doesn't much care for boats either, but they're certainly better than being 300 feet below the surface, where the sheer amount of water around him makes Pete's heart feel like it's going to explode.
He grabs his suit and moves to the edge of the boat along with the other divers. They know about his fear and are always kind to him, even though they can't understand what he's doing at this job. Both of the others are lifelong swimmers—part mermen, as far as Pete's concerned.
With his suit on, Pete grabs his specialty tool belt and clips it around his waist and chest. Frozen stiff, he looks over the edge at the choppy water. The other divers shove him over and he splashes clumsily into the sea. He's not angry. He asked them to do it, knowing it was the only way he was going to get in.
The dive down takes a while, and Pete's happy he has the capacity to feel delighted at seeing small schools of colorful fish on the way down to the pipe. Twenty minutes later, he's in position, alone, at his section. And then the fear returns.
The pipe should be fine, though he wishes it weren't. If there was some kind of major leak or emergency, at least he could get his mind off the water for a few minutes and focus on something mechanical and straightforward. Dangerous, maybe, but easier for him.
Pete swims along the length of the pipe and searches for weakness. This is typically done by examining the color and the shape. He uses his fingers to feel for cracks.
After a few hours, he comes across a darkened section of pipe. It's not broken, but it seems like it could snap at any second—sort of like Pete himself. He grabs his welder, lights the end, and shores up the weld job on it. If only curing himself of this dumb fear of water were so easy.
Welding takes an hour and half, and when he's done he moves back to the surface to refresh his supplies and enjoy a few minutes of air outside of a tube. He eats a granola bar but doesn't join the other divers on the boat. He knows if he gets out of the water, he'll never get back in. At least not without being shoved from behind.
According to his fear supervision guru (another one of Cassie's ideas), his phobia is specifically for water at depths of twenty feet and deeper, but he's always just generally hated water. He hates drinking it, he hates rain, and he really hates showers.
Back underwater, Pete spends another few hours working on and inspecting the pipe. Once he's convinced it's solidly fixed, he joins the other divers to work on some kind of processing hub in the late afternoon. This fix is more in-depth, involving the unscrewing of multiple metal panels to access and examine the filters and control system.
Pete's stationed on the bottom of the hub for the repair, while the others are on top. This arrangement works well enough for the first three panel doors, but on the fourth, one of the divers loses his grip and the 150-pound steel door knocks against the side of Pete's head.
Suddenly, everything goes black. Then bright blue with purple stripes. Then black again.
Pete wakes up a few minutes later, face-to-face with the other divers on his team. They seem relieved to see him conscious. He shakes his head like he's getting water out of his ear, then swims around as the others cheer. He's not paying attention to them, though—he's paying attention to this strange but incredible feeling surrounding his hands and body.
To his complete and utter surprise, Pete finds he's not afraid of the water anymore. He's actually...enjoying it. It seems hard to believe, but maybe that bump on the head did him some good.
Pete's workday ends after he and the divers successfully finish inspecting the hub, and soon after he follows his team back to the boat. During the trip up, he feels a sudden sadness to be leaving the ocean so soon after learning to love it.
Eventually, Pete breaches the surface and removes his mask. He freezes. The wind, the setting sun, the air...none of it feels right.
Without thinking, he pulls his mask back on and dives back underwater, where an almost palpable feeling of safety washes over him. He spins around onto his back and looks up through the water at the two men staring down at him. They're waving him up, looking confused, but Pete doesn't understand why—the water's wonderful.