8 minutes. The water closes over your head. You can feel yourself slipping lower, even though your legs are still moving. Waves are crashing above you, but there’s too much water in your ears to hear them. You think maybe you read something somewhere about the average person being able to hold their breath for 3-4 minutes. You wonder if that’s how long it’s going to take. Drowning, that is.
7 minutes. Your brain is telling you to inhale but your lungs are resisting. Your ribs are starting to be consumed by an almighty burning and the water is getting darker. The level of oxygen in your blood is going down, while the level of carbon dioxide is going up. You think how strange it is that oxygen is what makes cells age, that what we need most kills us in the end.
6 minutes. Your limbs aren’t moving anymore. Your body is more concerned with trying to make your lungs fill. You think the breath-hold break point is coming soon. It must be. Your body is screaming. Every vein, every artery, every fiber, every nerve ending screaming for oxygen. Your brain keeps telling you not to breathe. You know that breathing in water is bad. That’s what your dad said when you were learning to swim, wasn’t it?
5 minutes. Your body forces you to inhale, immediately causing you to cough, which only increases the amount of water in your throat. Your larynx and vocal cords constrict to keep water out of your lungs, so it goes to your stomach. This will last about a minute, you think. Water in the stomach. Then your larynx will relax and water will flood your chest. You saw this on the news once; they call it wet drowning.
4 minutes. Things are black. You’ve passed out. Like the news said it would, your larynx relaxes in your unconscious state. Your heart is slowing down, as it tries to pump your blood. The blood is getting thicker, something with the amount of salt in the water. You read that in your 7th grade science textbook.
3 minutes. You go into cardiac arrest. Your blood stops flowing. Oxygen stops going to your brain. Your body gives up in the amount of time it takes a spaceship to lift off. 3
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