Flashes of Panic

I shuffled in to the pool this morning (I was the only one, by the way) and interrupted a poor-coffee-service story the lifeguard was telling the swim coach.

While I was stretching, I overheard enough of the conversation to figure out that she had been to Penn Relays with the track team. Distance Night always runs exceptionally late, for some reason, and when the races were over, apparently, they just drove straight back to Amherst. When they arrived (not long after 5:30, apparently) she figured there wasn’t any point to sleeping when she had to be at the pool at 7.

While I was pool-running, I saw her staring at me with that blank, stoned-out gaze you give the only thing moving in the room when you’re struggling desperately to stay awake. Eventually the coach told her to go home and sleep. I didn’t hear all the conversation, but there was some dismissive statement about the odds of me drowning while unsupervised in the pool.