Westin Haas was not in pain, but as he surfaced from the dark waters of Kerr Lake his right hamstring felt like it was cramping and he reached to rub it.
That's when he discovered he was in a life-or-death struggle. Much of the backside of his leg seemed to be gone.
A few minutes before, Geremy Taylor, Brent Edwards and Haas, three friends and football players at North Raleigh Christian, had netted bait minnows for some night fishing on the lake. The three linebackers had decided at dinner that night that they would wrap up a day of wakeboarding and fishing with a little more fishing.
It had been an idyllic day, filled with memories and expressions of hope for the upcoming football season and their senior year. They had laughed a lot. The running gag all day was Edwards wore a long-sleeve shirt on such a hot day.
But as the pontoon boat zipped through the darkness to better fishing grounds, it bumped and Haas was hurled into the water. The boat immediately passed over him, the propellers churning at near full speed.
Taylor, who was driving, killed the engine while his friend struggled beneath the water.
Haas' swim suit had become entangled in the propeller, and beneath the water, in the blackness, he struggled to free himself.
"I don't know why, but I was calm," he said. "I didn't panic."
Haas pulled himself free and gasped for air at the surface, unaware that his ordeal, and his miracle, was just beginning.
"There was no pain," he said. "But my hamstring felt a little crampy. That's when I reached back and found a hole bigger than my hand."
The propeller had gashed the back of his leg to the bone in two places. The wounds looked like huge swatches of missing muscle and flesh had been ripped away, rather than just cut.
"I'm cut bad," he called to his companions.
As he laid on the boat deck as it rushed to shore, with a tourniquet fashioned from Edwards' long-sleeved shirt helping staunch the bleeding, he reached back again and again felt nothing.
"It was emptiness," he recalled. "The back side of my leg was gone."
Medical personnel arrived, saw the wounds and called for a helicopter to airlift Haas to Duke Hospital in Durham.
Every doctor who treated him during the upcoming weeks said it was a miracle that Haas survived.
Despite the severity of the wounds, no major vessel or artery was cut. The sciatic nerve, which runs from the spine throughout the lower back and legs, was undamaged, although the flesh above, below and to each side of the nerve was cut.
"The doctors tell me I could have been hit almost anywhere else on my body and been killed or permanently disabled," Haas said. "And without Brent's shirt, I don't know what would have happened."
Haas' prognosis was good, the doctors said. In about 12 months, he would be as good as new. Or at least almost as good as he was.
But 12 months? Haas cried in his hospital room every night for two weeks after getting the news.
"I wanted to play football," said the 5-foot-8, 200-pound Haas, who is a top candidate to play in the North Carolina-South Carolina Shrine Senior Game for players at independent high schools.
Haas stayed in the hospital for 19 days, and as soon as he left he set a goal of getting on the field this season.
"My goal was to play one down in the final regular-season game," he said. "I was thinking maybe, somehow, I would get to play one play."
His recuperative abilities amazed everyone.
On Oct. 1, three months and one day after the accident and about nine months ahead of his rehab schedule, he ran through a tunnel of teammates and took the field for a game against Village Christian. He didn't limp through the tunnel, he ran.
His return is no symbolic gesture. He has regained his starting positions as a running back and a linebacker.
He rushed for 6 yards on his first carry, a moment that he expects to remember for the rest of his life.
"To be back on the field, with my friends, was an indescribable experience," he said.
He rushed for 100 yards in the game, a 71-0 victory.
Haas has an easy explanation for his recovery, although he knows many people won't agree with him.
He knows others might think that it was luck, mere happenstance, that saved his life about three months ago on a terror-filled night on Kerr Lake, but Haas is a person of faith.
Tim Haas, his father, is the director of visual arts at Providence Baptist Church in Raleigh.
"It was a miracle," Haas said.
