Ali Truwit gathers her gear as she stands on the deck of a boat floating off Turks and Caicos in the Atlantic Ocean. It’s a warm and sunny day in May, ideal for snorkeling. Sophie Pilkinton, her former Yale swimming teammate, asks her to pose for a photo. Ali grins.
What a perfect life.
Ali ran a marathon with her mom in Copenhagen 10 days ago. Two days ago, she graduated from Yale. Now, she is celebrating with her best friend, about to dive into the crystal clear, blue tropical water.
As they put on their masks and flippers, Sophie grabs Ali’s hand.
“Ali,” she asks, “are you sure there are no sharks here?”
“Soph,” Ali says. “This is where we come all the time. We never see anything here.”
She peers into her friend’s eyes: “Don’t worry,” Ali says.
Sophie relaxes.
Together, they jump.
ALI AND SOPHIE leisurely swim next to the boat for a few minutes, acclimating themselves to the water and their equipment. Then they venture farther away, looking for fish and the coral reef — 20 yards first, then 50, then 100.
Thirty minutes pass. They spot a few fish.
That’s when Sophie sees it. A massive gray shark. Swimming toward Ali.
“I was looking the shark dead in the eyes,” Sophie says.
Ali, who is facing toward Sophie, doesn’t notice it approaching from her right.
“Ali, Ali, Ali,” Sophie yells into her mask. Her name sounds funny underwater. She pokes Ali’s arm. Ali looks at Sophie, and that’s when she notices a presence next to her.
Oh, that must be a dolphin. She’d seen some during her previous trips.
Sophie whips around toward the boat, and Ali — instinctively — turns with her.
The shark moves underneath Ali. Its back comes up under her belly.
Am I riding a dolphin right now?
Then it rams her.
Ali gasps. Her stomach constricts. She knows.
This is no dolphin. This is a shark.
Ali kicks. She makes fists and punches the shark’s back. The shark moves to Sophie. It bumps her from underneath. Sophie kicks and shoves.
The shark moves to Ali’s left side. It opens its mouth and bites. Ali feels no pain.
My leg is in a shark’s mouth.
Ali cranes her neck to look at her left leg.
She sees a stream of blood amid the beautiful clear blue water.
AM I CRAZY or do I not have a foot right now?
Ali pulls off her snorkeling mask and waves it above the water. Sophie does the same.
“Help!” they scream. “Please help!”
The boat is too far away. Their guide can’t hear them.
Their faces above water, Ali and Sophie look at each other. A knowing glance. They have to swim back to the boat. Side by side, masks in hand, they head back.
The shark follows. This time, it hits Sophie, slowing her down. Ali kicks with her right leg and swims, putting some distance between herself and Sophie and the shark.
Then, the shark swims ahead and bumps Ali — hard — from underneath.
I need to survive.
I need to swim as fast as I can to the boat.
She senses blood gushing from her left leg.
Ali reaches the boat and the guide tells her to climb aboard.
“Sir, I don’t have a foot,” Ali says.
He extends his hand, and Ali clings to it as Sophie pushes her from below. Sophie, a medical student, gets back on the boat, and her mind seems absurdly clear. She grabs a towel from the pile of things they’d left on the deck and wraps it around what’s left of Ali’s left leg. She asks the guide for a tourniquet and ties it tightly on Ali’s upper left thigh. She orders Ali to sit on the deck and elevate her left leg. Sophie holds it in the air as the guide radios to shore to request an ambulance.
“I ran a marathon last week,” Ali mumbles to Sophie. “And now I don’t have a foot?”
Right then, a boat approaches. Matt Bevilacqua, a diving instructor, jumps aboard. He had seen them waving for help and rerouted to them. He sits next to Ali, leans in close and asks her questions.
What is your name? Where are you from? Where did you go to college? What was your thesis on?
His only goal: to keep Ali awake.
Facing the sun and the blue Turks sky, Ali answers.
“My name is Ali Truwit. I am from Darien, Connecticut. I graduated from Yale. My thesis was on emotional intelligence and leadership.”
They arrive at the dock. An ambulance is waiting. Sophie almost single-handedly lifts the stretcher and puts Ali into the ambulance. She finds a bucket inside the vehicle and places it underneath Ali’s leg to keep it lifted. She sits next to her, holding the bucket in place. The paramedic struggles to get the blood pressure cuff onto Ali’s arm. Sophie takes over and wraps it around her best friend’s upper arm.
The adrenaline starts to leave Ali’s body. What takes its place is pain like she’s never experienced before. Excruciating, unending pain. It only gets worse with every pothole the ambulance hits as they weave through one-way roads to the hospital.
AT 3:45 P.M., Ali’s mom, Jody Truwit, is walking up her driveway when she receives a call from an international number.
“My stomach felt sick,” Jody says.
She answers.
“We have your daughter Alexandra,” the voice says. “She’s in very critical condition.”
It is the nurse at the Turks hospital.
Sophie grabs the phone.
“Mrs. Truwit,” Sophie says. “We’ve been in a shark attack.”
“The shark took Ali’s foot and part of her leg. We’re in the hospital, trying to stabilize her.”
Tears stream down Jody’s face. “Are you OK?” she asks Sophie.
“I’m physically OK,” Sophie says. “They’re trying to rush her into surgery.”
Sophie places the phone near Ali’s ear. Jody sobs.
“Mom,” Ali says. “Please don’t cry. Sophie and I are not crying.”
Jody runs into the house. She yells for Ali’s dad, Mitch. She tells him what happened. A guttural scream emanates from her husband’s body. In her 26 years of marriage to him, Jody has never heard him scream like that.
Jody comes up with a plan. She will stay on the phone with Ali for as long as she can. Mitch, who is a CEO of a private equity firm, and their three sons will make calls to their primary care doctor, their surgeon friends and relatives. They need to learn as much as they can about shark attacks. Fast.
“Mom, it hurts so much,” Ali whispers into the phone.
Jody, a therapist, asks Ali to breathe in for a count of five and breathe out for a count of five. Box breathing. She repeats mantras she’d chanted with Ali growing up.
“I can and I will.”
“I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”
“This too shall pass.”
Ali is wheeled into a room separated by white curtains. She is hooked up to monitors. She is given morphine. A doctor walks in and talks about emergency surgery with a saw he had recently procured but never used.
Is treatment in this hospital the only option I have?
Meanwhile, Jody and Mitch’s medical connections advise them to get Ali medevaced home for surgery. Ryder Trauma Center in Miami is the closest.
Over the phone, Jody informs the nurse of their plan. The doctor objects. Ali’s vitals are not stable enough for her to fly safely, he says.
At around 5 p.m., two hours after the attack, Ali flippantly says to Jody, “The shark probably still has my foot.”
Jody passes that information to Mitch, who calls the boat company that took Ali and Sophie on their snorkeling trip. He asks a crew to look for Ali’s foot in the ocean.
About 45 minutes later, as Ali continues to whisper mantras with her mom and as Sophie braids Ali’s hair, the boat crew arrives at the hospital.
One of them is holding Ali’s left foot, still in the flipper.
The crew found it in the same area where the shark had attacked Ali.
Ali feels nauseous. She averts her gaze from her foot.
“Feet can be reattached,” the doctor says. It needs to happen fast — in four hours — but it can happen, he says.
He has never performed a reattachment surgery, he adds.
Shortly after, he OKs Ali’s medevac to Miami.
His proclamation is everything to Ali.
I don’t know how any of this works, but my foot can be reattached. It’s going to suck for a little while. But everything’s going to go back to normal.
A hospital crew lays Ali’s foot on ice. Sophie sees them inject it with antibiotics.
Jody contacts a medevac company and arranges for a plane.
One hour passes, and then two, and then three.
Ali, who is laying in front of a large clock, stares at it as every minute ticks away.
The doctor assures her that in some cases reattachment can happen even several hours after the attack. She takes a deep breath.
At 10 p.m., almost seven hours after she was attacked by a shark, Ali is stretchered onto a small plane. Her foot is placed in the seat next to her. There is no room for Sophie.
Jody, who is still on the phone, tells the nurse accompanying Ali to “please hold her hands — she must feel so alone.”
As the plane takes off, the tourniquet digs into Ali’s upper thigh. She begs the nurse to loosen it. But the nurse says it’s too dangerous with the change in the air pressure.
Am I going to survive? Will my body be able to handle this plane ride? Will I see my parents again?
What will the doctors do? How will they get the muscles to attach?
Will it work?
