"...blood that ran down his arm. And then he swam on."

Miles off shore and surrounded by a darkness that swallowed him whole in the breaking surf, Patrick Scartozzi fought exhaustion, bitter cold and the urge to peek at his watch.

Back home, his wife lay awake in bed listening to the birds and frogs outside as she waited for dawn and feared facing their children once more.

"I knew I was alive and floating, and I knew they didn't know," Scartozzi said Tuesday, four days after he disappeared off the St. Lucie Inlet during a commercial fishing dive. "I would have rather been in my position than to have been in their position, not knowing if I was stuck under a rock, dead."

The 43-year-old Palm City resident and Fort Lauderdale firefighter spent 22 hours in the ocean, steadily kicking toward land with a bleeding, shattered hand before a Coast Guard helicopter found him almost a mile off shore Saturday. A licensed commercial diver, Scartozzi became separated from his boat during a trip to spear snapper and grouper...[TCPalm.com]