“On his third pass, a wave caught a child. Not a large wave — a three-foot set wave, the kind that looked playful from shore and that contained, for a four-year-old standing in knee-deep water, enough force to knock her off her feet and drag her into the backwash. The child went under. The mother — standing ten feet away, phone in hand, photographing the sunset — did not see. Meera was off the tower before the mother screamed. Rescue tube across her chest. Sprint. Twenty metres. The sand grabbed at her feet — the specific, yielding, energy-stealing resistance of running on beach sand that every lifeguard trained for and that never got easier.”