I'm a cave rescue diver. Most people hear that and pictures some Discovery Channel

documentary, dramatic music, divers swimming gracefully through crystal clear water.

That's not what it's like, not even close.

What it's really like is crawling through a stone throat that's barely wide enough for your body,

hundreds of feet underground, with water pressing in on you from every angle.

The ceiling scrapes the tank strapped to your back, the rock squeezes your shoulders until they bruise,

and if your light dies, you can't even see your own hands in front

of your face. Just black, thick and total, the kind of dark that makes you feel like you've

already been buried. We go in because people get stuck down there, amateurs, weekend thrill seekers,

sometimes tourists who thought a guided tour meant they could just keep going once the rope ends. If they're lucky, they panic and turn back

early. If they're unlucky, I get called in. I've had grown men claw at my mask in blind terror, ripping out their own regulators

because they swore they were drowning, even while they still had air.

I've had to haul limp bodies out by the harness.

Lips blue, lungs full, their face is so swollen with water, it's like they were trying to scream

the whole time.

I've even found one bloated and wedged in a rock fissure, so tight, it took two hours just to free

him, skin peeling under my gloves as I pulled.

That's the job.

That's the reality. You breathe slowly, you move slowly, and you

pray that nothing goes wrong, because in those passages even the smallest mistake can kill you.

But all of that, the panic, the corpses, the claustrophobia, feels like child's play, compared

to what happened last night.

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