We Are All Samaritans

I'm writing this from a cruise ship in the Caribbean. Why, you ask? I'm waiting for my wife and daughter to get ready for dinner, and I have some time to kill. Plus, this is a story worth telling.

The weather on this cruise has been pretty good, but the swells have been unlike any I've experienced, in 11 cruises. Fifteen to twenty feet, with the boat rocking like a bucking bronc, every joint in our cabin creaking like a Halloween soundtrack.

A couple days ago, we were on Antigua, a beautiful island that boasts 365 beaches - one for every day of the year. We've visited a couple before, and this time, after we arrived in the port and capital of St. John's, we took a cab to a new beach, called Darkwood, on the south side of the island, looking across the water to the volcanic isle of Monserrat.

It was idyllic, a beautiful expanse of sand, uncrowded, with a little beach bar and restaurant behind it, and lounge chairs we could rent ($5 for the day, a bargain) with a cabana to pull them under when we'd had too much sun. Incredible.

The surf was much higher than usual, and the waves came up to our lounge chairs a number of times. Needless to say, we wisely avoided going in too deep, given the strong surge. Others weren't so wise.

We saw one young man, lying on the beach with his wife or girlfriend, jump up and run headlong toward the waves. Instead of running through the first one or two waves, then diving, he dove into the first wave, and he took it high. Bad move.

I could tell when he took off, it would not end well. Sure enough, he came up nursing his arm, his shoulder lowered, in obvious pain. He was able to make it back to his lounge chair, and his significant other ran for help. A woman who I took to be a nurse helped him fashion a sling out of his beach towel.

Shortly thereafter, they made their way to a waiting cab. As he walked by, I could see the broken collarbone pushing up the skin next to his shoulder. A beautiful vacation, ruined - or at least impeded - by a bad choice.

A bit later, there was another group next to us, and three of the men ran toward the waves, and again, dove in - this time, at least, into the second or third wave. But again, I could tell that one of them landed badly, the one in the middle. My concerns were confirmed when I saw him on his back, with blood apparently running from his ear. That brought me to my feet (my wife and daughter were shopping for handmade sarongs in a small area next to the beach restaurant).

When the guy's two friends started pulling him out of the water, I ran to help. Never mind that I swim about well enough to get across the neighborhood pool and back. As we pulled him clear of the coming wave, I got smacked in the face by it, but we kept pulling - or at least I did.

The two friends stopped once we were clear of the wave. But I knew that the waves had been coming in threes, with the first stopping shortest of the beach, the second advancing further, and the third often reaching to the beach chairs and beyond. So I urged my companions to keep pulling. The trouble was, they were German, and spoke not a bit of English.

I kept pulling the guy, and urging them to help. They caught on, and more of their party came to help. Two people grabbed his leg, but that still left me with his torso, and he was a big guy - and pretty well out of it; not unconscious, but unable to get to his feet or help himself.

Finally, I got someone to help me lift his upper body, and we got him clear of the water and onto a lounge chair. It turns out his bloody ear was just a superficial scrape, to match the cut on his lip and the one above his eye, all of which were bleeding. His eyes were also filled with sand and salt water, so someone rinsed them with fresh bottled water.

Now, I can't tell you how many times I've been on my way to work and seen a car broken down, and thought, "Everybody has cell phones these days - help's probably already on its way. Besides, I'm running late - let somebody else stop, who's not in a hurry." It's the Good Samaritan story all over again.

But this was different. I sensed that this man could have been in grave danger (as Jack Nicholson would say, is there any other kind?). So I just ... helped him.

Now, here's where God is in the details of these things.

First, when we arrived in port, we had planned to go to a different beach, one my wife and I had been to on our first visit to Antigua. But when we told the cabbie we wanted to go there because we remembered it being uncrowded, he said, "Oh, no, it's crowded now - the cruise is having its beach barbecue there."

So we asked him to recommend a beach that would be nice, uncrowded, and have a restaurant and chairs we could rent. He mentioned Darkwood, but said it would be too expensive a ride ($32 each way for the three of us) and take too long (25-30 minutes). We were fine with the cost and the travel time, so we chose Darkwood - where this German tourist would have a mishap in the strong surf.

Second, my wife and daughter had gone to shop for local goods, as I mentioned. I could have gone with them. But I opted to stay on the beach, and I wasn't just lying there getting fried, I was watching the other people.

The third "God element" in the story has to do with an accident of my own, that I had the night before, at dinner. We were eating in the ship's buffet, and one of the entrees was fish. It looked good, but there was one piece in particular, right in the middle of the pan, that looked particularly nice - cooked exactly to my liking.

So, greedy soul that I am, instead of just taking the tongs and picking up the nearest piece of fish, I was determined to pick the choicest piece out of the middle of the pan (forbidden fish, perhaps?). I carefully maneuvered the tongs to grab my target, when I brushed the knuckle of my pinkie against the heating element above the pan.

Those things are hot, in case you ever wondered. Hot enough to immediately blister the skin, then melt the blistered skin to the element, breaking the blister in the process. It's nice and neat - no blister-popping, and it pretty effectively self-cauterizes the wound so that it doesn't hurt at all. Other than the initial burn, and a throbbing that comes an hour or so later.

I put Neosporin ointment on the blister and put a Band-Aid on my finger for the night. The next day, as I packed my daypack for the beach, I threw in the Neosporin. Otherwise, I'd never have Neosporin with me on the beach.

When the German tourist was on the beach chair and his friends were attending to him, I saw his bloody wounds, thought of the Neosporin - which I didn't really need at that point - and grabbed it, walking over to them. I remembered what little German I knew, courtesy of my Dad's stint in WWII. "Sprechen sie English?" I asked the group. One guy replied, "Ja, a little."

So I showed him the tube of ointment, explained that it was antibiotic, and told him to have someone put some on their finger, and rub it on his bloody wounds. We were able to communicate enough for them to be able to get the job done.

Did God put me on that beach that day? Yes, I believe He did. Did he compel me to not go shop with my wife and daughter? Probably, though that one I routinely handle on my own.

Did he make me burn my finger the night before? No, I don't believe so. That resulted from my own greed, wanting to take the very best piece of fish for myself, instead of just taking the nearest one.

But God used my greedy mistake, helping me to think to put the Neosporin in my backpack. That tube of antibiotic ointment is now on its way back to Germany, in the possession of a passenger on another cruise ship, who will never know who the guy was who pulled him out of the water on a beautiful beach on a small island in the Caribbean. And though I don't know him either, I've been praying for him anyway.

After it was over, I told my wife and daughter what had happened. My daughter had seen me pulling the guy out of the water. She looked at me curiously, and said, "Dad, you're a hero." I told her I wasn't; that I just did an ordinary thing.

But one thing does make it extraordinary - besides God's obvious intervention. If I'm a hero in my daughter's eyes - I can't imagine anything more that I could aspire to be.