He knows she'd have made it, knows that once your feet are on silt you're more or less safe, doesn't imagine she'd have plunged under so close to the shore, but it didn't stop him. Couldn't help it, the urge to see her through those final feet, it's almost more for himself than for her. There isn't a scenario where he'd have swam past her and let her clamber out on her own.

His scrubs stick to him, plastered to his body everywhere but the left sleeve he'd ripped off for easier articulation. Hair is a similar state, soaking wet and sticking to his face at points, dripping like a drowned rat. Once they're safe, stable, grounded by gravity, he allows himself to collapse next to her on the shore. Lands hard on his left ass cheek, weighed down by metal and struggling to catch his breath. It's not the exertion so much as the sucking in of a hell of a lot of god damn water, most of it choked right back up, sure, but it was still enough to put a little strain on his lungs.

He shakes his head steadily, a constant back and forth that sends his hair dancing and dripping.

"I don't-" He starts breathlessly, eyes flickering from her toward the waterline again. "I don't know, I'm fine, I- I don't know how what we're doing here..."

Neither does anyone else, it seems. One by one they make their way onto the shore like turtles, some running, some collapsing, a few washing up. He can see distant outlines of heads bobbing, treading water or swimming back. For the moment, none are in obvious distress. None sink down beneath the surface or splutter to the top, but somehow he thinks it's inevitable