Floaters

A couple of days ago, we were called to help a man out of a bathtub. After that call, I couldn't help thinking about other patients we've pulled out of water.

We call them "floaters," for obvious reasons. After drowning, their bodies float to the surface. Eventually, someone spots the body and calls us.

Some people become floaters by accident, drowning after falling off a pier or a boat. We've had a few of those. Several years ago, we were called to a dock at the waterfront, where a fisherman had found a body in the water. I learned from the next morning's newspaper that the dead man had been drinking on a harbor cruise, and had fallen over a railing. Nobody knew what had happened until the boat docked without him.

More often, though, floaters go into the water on purpose. They commit suicide. Sometimes they jump from bridges, hoping to die from the fall. As the tallest such structure in Boston, the Tobin Bridge is a favorite location. Sometimes they jump into the water with the intention of drowning. Given the panic that must ensue, this has never struck me as a particularly effective way to kill yourself. Certainly there are more peaceful, less traumatic methods.

The body of a drowning victim is not a pretty sight. It gets worse, of course, the longer the body remains in the water. After a while the skin sloughs off, until finally bone becomes visible. And then there are the effects of marine life. Fish often feed on the exposed flesh, accelerating the process of decomposition.

The most gruesome floater I ever attended was found behind a waterfront hotel. The body belonged to a man, but there wasn't enough left of his face to determine how old he'd been. I doubt he'd been in the water for long, because the skin beneath his clothing was intact. Fish had eaten away all of the exposed areas, though, giving him the appearance of a well-dressed skeleton.

As I stood on the dock writing my report, a crew from the Medical Examiner's office arrived. The lead technician was a crusty old guy who'd seen everything. "Well, what do we have here?" he asked, squatting as if to speak to the dead man. He reached down, stuck his fingers into the open eye socket of the skull, and plucked out a live crab. "You're not supposed to be in there," he said to the tiny animal. Tossing it into the sea, he went about the business of packaging the body as if nothing unusual had happened.

Not every attempt at suicide by drowning has an unhappy ending. Recently we responded to a South Boston restaurant, where a man announced to dozens of outdoor diners that he was about to kill himself. As they watched, he jumped over a railing into the ocean. The coldness of the water surprised him, though, and he immediately climbed back out.

The customers at the restaurant were not impressed. In fact, they barely looked up from their meals when we arrived. Nobody approached us; nobody told us what had happened. Finally, after I asked somewhat loudly whether anyone had seen a man in the water, one diner pointed up the street and said, "He went that way. I think he changed his mind."