学进去

It was a bright spring afternoon along the Maryland coast, and Jonathan Bauer, 51, a technology executive at a hospital, and his 13-year-old daughter, Ava, were taking full advantage of it. They were driving with the windows down as they headed home on the 1.4-mile, two-lane Route 90 bridge, which spans the shallow waters of Assawoman Bay. Suddenly, the calm was disturbed by a high-pitched noise.

Not far ahead of them, a black pickup was slipping from one lane to the other. To the Bauers’ horror, it hit a BMW sedan and came to rest swinging over the rail of the bridge.

Bauer stopped his car and ran to the BMW. “Are you OK?” he asked the driver. She nodded, too shocked to speak. And then the driver’s door of the pickup was thrown open and a man climbed out. He pointed down, saying something in Spanish. In the water was a car seat. Next to it, a girl, about two years old, was floating on her back, kicking and splashing and screaming.

Bauer waited for the pickup driver to do something, but he didn’t. Maybe he was in shock. Bauer jumped into the shallow water quickly, swam to the drowning girl in a few quick strokes and lifted her out of the water: mouth half open, eyes nearly closed, not breathing. Standing, he laid her against his shoulder and hit her back with the flat of his hand. Come on… come on…

And then a retching (干呕的) sound as ocean water came streaming from her mouth. But still no breath. Another hit on the back and another retch, followed by an intake of fresh air, and then the beautiful sense of little fingers grasping him around the neck. Her eyes were opened now, focused on him. A moment later a family on a rowboat pulled up and dragged Bauer and the little girl aboard. The girl suffered a broken shoulder but was otherwise uninjured.

Ava Bauer was so inspired by her father’s actions that four months later she became a volunteer firefighter so that she too could save lives. “That girl is going to live a whole life because of him,” she says. “It’s incredible.”