"Help me! Please, help me! He's going to drown, oh my God my son is drowning!"

On the whole, Sophia made it a point to avoid Santa Monica Pier. Too crowded, too many tourists, and quite frankly, nothing all that interesting. Even the rollercoaster was shitty. However, when she got off early in the morning after a particularly challenging shift, sometimes she would come down here before the crowds arrived. There was something immensely peaceful about an empty pier, stretching out into the endless ocean with the sun just barely coming up over the horizon, fresh, salty air washing over her.

Last night had been a rough shift. Four victims—a whole family— of a car accident were brought in around midnight. The parents had survived; the children did not. When she closed her eyes, Sophia could still hear the screams of the mother when she learned that her children hadn't made it.

Those screams were not unlike the screams that shifted Sophia's attention from the open ocean to the end of the pier. A woman not too much older than herself ran forward, waving one hand, a cell phone clasped in the other.

Just as in the E.R. when an ambulance brought a patient in, Sophia felt adrenaline surge and she acted on instinct. "What happened?" she gasped, running to the woman before she gave herself time to think.

"He's down here."

Together, they ran to the end of the pier and down to the lower deck. Sophia slammed into the railing, her eyes briefly but frantically searching the water below her. It was difficult to miss the kid, splashing around and desperately trying to keep himself above water but only serving to exhaust himself further.

"He can't swim?" Sophia asked, turning her attention to the mother.

She jerked her head. "No, neither of us can." Panic pressed in on the edge of her voice. Sophia knew the sound well and figured they had less than a minute before the woman had a total meltdown.

"You called 9-1-1?"

The woman nodded. "Paramedics are five minutes out."

Sophia looked down again. The kid definitely didn't have five minutes before he drowned.

The adrenalin that had surged through Sophia's body seemed to slow everything down, allowing her to efficiently make decisions, just as she did in her job. In a split second, Sophia had weighed all the options and knew exactly what she was going to do.

"Go to the beach, right side of the pier." Sophia pointed so the woman would know exactly where to go. She slipped off her jacket and shoes. "Meet me there."

"What—"

But Sophia didn't wait for the onslaught of questions. Instead, instinct still taking charge of all of her decisions, she swung one leg over the edge of the railing, and then the other, and pushed herself back into the open air over the water.

Plunging into the Pacific Ocean was like suddenly stepping into a cold shower. Sophia kicked to the surface and spit out salt water, gasping for breath as her body adjusted to the shock of the temperature change. Her waterlogged clothes threatened to drag her down, but a decade of swim lessons and another five years of competing kept her afloat.

The kid could barely keep his head above water. Sophia lunged for him, ignoring the fact that he was panicking and might very well push her under the surface because of it, bringing both of them down.

Just as she reached the kid, another splash. Sophia looked up, another bolt of adrenalin moving through her brain. If it was the mother, overcome with panic, then they would really be in trouble. Sophia could keep afloat one child, but two people who couldn't swim? That would be almost impossible for her to handle alone.

Just as she thought, Sophia's head was forced under the surface as she reached the kid and he immediately grabbed onto her in his panic, doing anything he could to keep from drowning.

"Hey, kid, kid!" Sophia gasped, fighting back to the surface. "I need you to relax." She tried to grab his arms to keep them from thrashing around and to steady him, but while she got one, the other continued to splash around, his body twisting in continued panic.

Sophia was just about to start to try her luck and just drag him to shore when he stilled. "I got you, kid, just try and go on your back."

Definitely not the mother. The newcomer's voice was deep and steady. Kicking her legs to tread water, Sophia turned her attention to her man helping her out, but all she could see was a lot of dark hair plastered across his forehead.

He swiped it out of his face, and the two made eye contact. The kid, feeling support from both sides, had calmed down a bit now that he was staying afloat.

"That way," Sophia instructed, pointing toward the shore where she had instructed the boy's mother to wait for them.

The man didn't argue. He simply nodded, his dark eyes serious, his mouth pressed into a frown.

In an awkward line, the three of them slowly made it back to shore. Sophia led the way, one of her arms clutched around the boy's and her other arm working in half of a breaststroke, her legs kicking beneath her. It got harder and harder with every move, her denim jeans slowly sliding down her waist and threatening to drag her down.

Having the man on the other side of the boy made all difference. He had his arm wrapped around the kid's waist and helped propel the three of them with his legs.

It was like the water version of a three-legged race.

Sophia could see flashing lights as they approached the shore, and figures racing down the sand toward the boy's anxiously waiting mother.

The man could stand first. He towered over Sophia as his feet hit solid ground, and the moment he could, he grabbed the boy and lifted him up in his arms.

Sophia's entire body trembled with exertion, and relief flooded her a few moments later when her feet met the solid ground and she could stand in the chest-deep water. She watched the man hurry forward with the kid, who he handed off to the paramedics that met him on the sand.

It gave Sophia a little extra time to make her way out of the water. The man was clearly in better shape than Sophia, and she was hoping to spare herself the embarrassment of him watching her drag herself out of the water, gasping for air and with shaking limbs. But no such luck. As the boy went with his mother and paramedics toward the waiting ambulance, the man waited by the waterline, keeping his eyes trained on Sophia.

"Are you okay?" he asked once she was in earshot.

Sophia looked at him in surprise, dragging herself the last few feet out of the water. "Me?" she asked. "Yeah, I'm fine."

And she was. Not exactly comfortable, and completely exhausted, but no damage was done. Her jeans hugged her legs in a sodden mass, and she knew that when she finally got home and peeled them off, her skin would be a red and irritated mess. Water seemed to stream out of every pore, a waterfall coming out of the hair that was tangled and plastered to her head. She licked the salt off of her lips, pursing her lips at the taste.

"What the hell were you thinking?"

Sophia gaped at him. Was he being serious right now? Sure, the adrenalin was wearing off so the reality of what she had just done began to hit her, but she was fine. Not to mention, he had done the exact same thing.

"If that's the case, then what the hell were you thinking?" Sophia shot back at him. "Last I checked, we both jumped off that pier, and I was only in the water for a few seconds longer than you were."

"And what if I had to save you, too?" the man demanded. "How was that going to help the kid?"

"You think I would need saving?" Sophia snapped. "What if I had to save you? Why am I so much more of a liability than you are?"

"I mean this is kind of my job, and I'm guessing you have no training."

Sophia opened her mouth to argue that it was also her job to save lives, but someone else cut her off.

"Dean, hey are you alright?"

Both of them turned to the new voice, and Sophia saw a firefighter, who had 'Captain' printed on his helmet, and a paramedic jogging down the beach toward him.

"Hey, Cap, yeah, I'm fine." Dean, as he was apparently called, glanced at Sophia. "She should be checked out, though."

"'She' has a name," Sophia replied coldly. "And I'm fine," she said, directing her words toward the paramedic who approached her.

The paramedic turned to look at her captain.

"Ma'am, just to be on the safe side, we should check you out," the fire captain said. "There are some risks, secondary drowning—"

"Infection in the lungs, yeah, I know," Sophia said. She was tired and cranky and all she wanted to do was go back to her car and go home. "Trust me, Captain, I have no intention of dying today, so if I had swallowed any seawater, I would tell you to take me to Ronald Reagan to get checked out. But I didn't. As I was telling Firefighter Dean here," Sophia rounded on him and narrowed her eyes, "I'm. Fine."

"Hey, I think I know you," the paramedic interjected. "You work at Ronald Reagan, right? In the E.R.?"

Thankful for someone being reasonable, Sophia turned toward the paramedic. "Yeah," she said. "So I think I know what I'm talking about."

The captain gave her a thoughtful look. "Alright," he finally agreed. "If you don't want treatment, you don't have to. But I would appreciate it if you could tell me what happened, from the beginning."

Sophia nodded and did as he asked, starting from the mother's screams and ending with her and Dean's conversation/argument.

"Hawthorne, you agree with all of that?"

Dean nodded stiffly.

"Alright, then," the captain said. "It sounds like it was a good thing you were on the pier this morning, Ms..."

"Sophia Shelby," Sophia supplemented.

"Ms. Shelby. Now, I have to advise you to go straight to the hospital if you start feeling unwell, but other than that, you're free to go."

"Thank you, Captain," Sophia said. It wasn't lost on her how Dean's frown returned at his captain's words, but she didn't give a shit. All he had done was berate her for trying to help and make a fuss over injuries that she didn't have. In fact, Sophia was willing to bet that she was the stronger swimmer between the two of them. He just happened to have bigger muscles.

She was halfway up the beach when she looked down at her feet and noticed the sand that caked her bare skin. Great. Sophia turned around and stared at the end of the pier, where she assumed her shoes and jacket still lay. With a groan, she veered off course, beginning the long trip to retrieve them.