Blogroll: Terry’s Place

Give Me A Beach by Terry Odell

Today I wel­come Susan M. Boyer to Terry’s Place. Susan is a life-long book lover and author of the Liz Tal­bot mys­tery series. She tags along with her hus­band on busi­ness trips when­ever she can because hotels are great places to write: fresh cof­fee all day and cook­ies at 4 p.m. They have a home in Greenville, SC, which they occa­sion­ally visit.

Susan will be giv­ing away a copy of her book, LOWCOUNTRY BOIL to one lucky com­menter. Win­ner will get to choose for­mat: dig­i­tal or print. You have until Fri­day to enter.

And while Susan is here, I’m also giv­ing away a book at Just Roman­tic Sus­pense.

Like many folks, I love the beach. Give me a beach umbrella, a chair, and a book, and I am one happy camper. I used to swim in the ocean, or per­haps more accu­rately, bob around in it, and ride the waves on any­thing that would float. That was before my close encounter with a stingray.

The waters off the coast of South Car­olina have a fair amount of sand and such stir­ring around in them cour­tesy of the rivers flow­ing into the Atlantic in the vicin­ity. Dis­claimer: I’m not a sci­en­tist who stud­ies such things. This is the rea­son I’ve been given since child­hood when I ask why the water in South Car­olina isn’t as clear as south Florida and the Caribbean. This could just as eas­ily be some­thing Mamma pulled out of thin air to keep me quite. I digress. The point is, you can’t see the bottom.

A few sum­mers ago we rented a beach house in Gar­den City, South Car­olina for a fam­ily vaca­tion. It had a boat dock in the back­yard and the Atlantic in the front. The first day—it was a beau­ti­ful day—Sugar, (my hus­band) my brother, and my brother-in-law took the pon­toon boat out fish­ing. Daddy, my sis­ter, and I were tak­ing a late after­noon dip. Mamma was sit­ting in her beach chair watch­ing us try to push each other down in the waves. We aggra­vate each other as a way of show­ing affection.

Sud­denly, fish started jump­ing out of the water—lots of fish. They’d break the sur­face, hit the water and jump again. They flopped and splashed all around us. Now, I’ve always heard that when small fish do this, it’s because a big­ger fish is try­ing to have them for sup­per. Nat­u­rally, I’m think­ing, Shark!

“Run!” I screamed and bolted for the beach. We were almost out of the water when some­thing got ahold of my foot and I just knew I was going to have a stump where my foot used to be. I expected gal­lons of blood. I’d have to be helicopter-lifted to the hos­pi­tal. Would I ever walk again? Would I die on the beach from blood loss? These were the things that ran through my mind because it felt like some­thing had chewed my foot clean off.

Imag­ine my shock sec­onds later when I reached the beach and my foot looked nearly normal—still attached and every­thing. It still hurt like blazes. But aside from a lit­tle red­ness and a mark just below my ankle, it looked fine—still attached and everything.

“A jel­ly­fish must have got­ten you,” my sis­ter said. “I know those hurt.”

She sounded real sym­pa­thetic, but I knew there was no way on God’s green earth she could pos­si­bly know how bad my foot hurt or she would be call­ing 911. I wanted Sugar.

“Find Jim,” I wailed.

“Let’s put some vine­gar on it,” my sis­ter said.

“This was not a jel­ly­fish,” I growled. My foot was now a brighter shade of red, and it had puffed up.

I limped towards the house. Some­one called Sugar on his cell phone, and by the time I made it to the house, he was there. He put me in the car and off to the ER we went.

I am telling y’all right now, this hurt worse than child­birth. The pain radi­ated up my leg and the swelling spread. It hurt so bad I howled all the way to the hos­pi­tal, which took only about twenty min­utes but felt like days. I was scared.

I kept right on howl­ing in the ER. They were busy, and wanted to shut me up, so some­one brought out some hot tow­els and wrapped my leg in them. “Does that feel better?”

I stopped my cat­er­waul­ing. “Yes—that helps.”

“A stingray got you. Heat breaks down the venom.”

Every time the tow­els cooled off, I started howl­ing again and they’d bring more. I didn’t have to wait long. The doc­tor had to cut open my foot to make sure the barb wasn’t in there. Thank­fully it wasn’t. After sev­eral shots and pre­scrip­tions for antibi­otics and painkillers, I left on crutches.

I spent the remain­der of that vaca­tion propped on pil­lows in the screened porch or hob­bling around. I still love beaches, but I have one iron-clad rule: If I can’t see the bot­tom, I don’t get in the water.

For more about Susan and her books, you can find her at her web­site, on Face­book, and  Twit­ter.