If he passed out with his hand no longer sealing the wound, life would bleed out of him. Eric' s mind raced, ls this the end?
He had been in tight spots many times. Always he had pulled through. The key was emotional control, never to be so frightened that he could not think and act. Life' s too good. l' m too young to die on this death.
He had to get around the headland where he could been seen. Clambering to his feet, arm still clenched, he staggered up the beach. "Suck it up, Eric, " he told himself aloud. "Hike! "
Eric understood what was happening to his body.While in graduate school in Montana he had spent two years as a ski-patrol volunteer and had earned a certificate in advanced first aid. The skill had served him through nearly a dozen rescues.
After 50 yards, he slumped on his backside. He needed to put his legs up, get more blood to his vital organs, but there was no time. He rested 30 seconds and stumbled on.
Twice more he dropped to the sand in a half-faint, He felt the blood pulsing under his hand, ready to spout. "Get tough! " he commanded, tightening his grip.
Ahead, 300 feet away, was a cluster of four beach houses. He stumbled toward them. Then he could go no further he had to sit down. Blood pooled in the sand around him. "Help me! " he cried.
In a small cottage at the edge of the beach, 16-year-old Ben Burdette heard someone yelling. Stepping outside, he saw a man lying on the sand. "Help! " came a shout. " I' ve been attacked by a shark. Call 911."
Ben saw the man' s upraised arms were covered in blood. Turning on his heeds, he sprinted for the house.
Inside, Ben' s mother, Michele, heard her son at the phone. "...on the beach, bitten by a shark, looks pretty bad..."
She ran to the beach. The figure sprawled there was still crying out. She gasped at the gore of his legs and arms. Kneeling at his side, she saw his lips were gray. "I' m loosing it,"he said. "You have to stop the bleeding. My left arm. There' s a pressure point underneath, up near the armpit. Hold on tight."
Michele sank her fingers into the main brachial artery of the arm.
Seconds later, Ben was on the scene with towels.Following Eric' s instruction, he used them to elevate the wounded man' s feet. Then he raced off to flag down the rescue units. Michelc avoided looking at Eric' s wounds and kept asking him questions to keep him awake.
In ten minutes or so, they were joined by a registered nurse, who was also captain of the volunteer rescue squad in nearby Davenport, a rescue team from the California Department of Forestry and Nick Larscn. He had been leaning against the truck, just a few hundred yards away, suspecting nothing.
"It' s good to have you here. " said Eric as Nick gripped his hand.
The rescuers, soon reinforced by an ambulance crew, labored over Eric for nearly an hour. They gave him pure oxygen and began running fluid into his veins.Cutting away his wet suit, they bandaged his wounds and pulled rubberized, inflatable trousers on his legs to force blood to his upper body.
Rescuers were astonished he was still lucid after such massive blood loss. The first reading of his systolic blood pressure was a perilously low 50. But by the time an evacuation helicopter got to the beach for the six-minute flight to Dominican Santa Cruz Hospital, Erlc' s blood pressure was close to normal.
It plummeted again with the removal of the pressure pants in the emergency room at Dominican, then began to rise after infusions of red blood and more fluids. Doctors judged that he had lost nearly half the blood in his body.
In the operating room, one surgeon worked on Eric' s leg, another on his arms. The quadriceps leg muscle was severed, a piece of an arm muscle bitten out altogether. Both arms were laid open to the bone. The bone itself was scratched by the sharks serrated teeth."It' s like the bone was sawed with a bread knife, " commented one doctor.
A week later, he was home with splint on his leg and casts on both arms. Three weeks after that he was limping along the beach and reliving his adventure. "I think the shark was tasting me, hoping I was a seal. " he said. "Maybe he didn' t like the taste of the rubbery wet suit and that' s why he let me go."
此刻，除了海豹的黑脑袋在绿色的太平洋上跃动，整个海域似乎就剩下埃瑞克·拉森和尼克·拉森两兄弟了。
1991年7月1日，一个星期一的早晨，他们穿着潜水紧身衣，戴着手套，在湛蓝的天空下踏着冲浪板冲浪。有一股来自南方的洋流来到此地，4英尺高的海浪冲击着加利福尼亚蒙特雷海湾众多海湾中一个狭窄、荒凉的小海滩。
早晨8点后，50岁的尼克将冲浪板指向150码以外的海滩，说道：“我要到卡车里暖和暖和。”