In January, Captain Cal and I stayed out of the waters off Diamond Head for a week when E. coli levels at nearby Public Baths, between the Waikiki Natatorium War Memorial and Queen’s Surf Beach, were found to be 10 times higher than threshold warning levels. There were sewage spills around that time in Pearl Harbor and Kalihi Stream, and onshore Kona winds kept blowing the pollution back toward shore.

Each morning we checked, even after the alert was canceled, the water looked dirty, with yellow foam and an oily sheen.

Then came a windless morning with glassy waves.

“Let’s go,” I said.

The Captain demurred. “I think I’m gonna wait another day.”

Back home, as I pulled on my wet suit, I removed the seven-chakra bracelet, handknotted in rainbow colors by Tibetan Buddhist monks, that my brother gave me for Christmas and said I should never take off. I forgot that it was supposed to keep me safe, not the other way around.

When I paddled out, the Silver Surfer and I had the lineup to ourselves. The waves were fun, with a little juice to them, walling up as the tide dropped, classic Suis-style. Silver hung on the inside, picking off the more numerous, smaller waves and leaving me my choice of the outside peaks.

“We’re lucky,” he reflected during a lull.

I asked if he’d heard about the E. coli.

“No! Gross!”

On the western horizon, red-brown smog stretched far out to sea from Barbers Point: air pollution from Honolulu traffic, factories and power plants. An asthmatic since childhood, I was glad I’d puffed on my inhaler before paddling out.

A set appeared and I was paddling out to meet it when something strange happened.

ALL AT once it was night. There were still two of us in the waves, but the other surfer wasn’t Silver on his shortboard. It was an old Hawaiian man on a longboard.

I thought of the late Rabbit Kekai, who used to give me tips when I was a kid, but this wasn’t Rabbit. This one came from farther back. He looked at me in silence. Starlight glimmered on the black waves. We were near an outfall: Polluted water flowed from a pipe into the sea.

Next thing I knew, it was daylight again. I had a sense of dislocation and fear.

You were dreaming, I told myself. Or hallucinating. Either way, I had been unconscious for an indeterminate time while on my surfboard, half a mile from shore. I wasn’t quite fully awake yet. I had gone so far away, back in time, yet only instants had passed: I was paddling through the same set, and Silver was still paddling back out after a long ride.

Could it have been a stroke? Things happen.

I caught a wave in, encouraged that I could pop up and turn.

At my doctor’s suggestion, Don dropped me at the ER to get checked out. Tests showed it wasn’t a stroke or a heart attack. What was it? No one knows.

But ours is a small neighborhood and word gets around. A few days later, the Captain’s wife, Penelope, came up our steps with a gift of fresh-baked lilikoi bars made with fruit from her vine.

She listened to a description of my dream.

“Too bad it wasn’t a young man!” she said.

MY BROTHER, who lives in California, learned six months ago that he has an aggressive cancer. Since then, he has been brave, cheerful, generous and strong and concerned for the rest of the family’s health.

I told him about my episode, making light of it, saying I’d never take the protective chakra bracelet off again. I thanked him for the gift, which symbolizes all the love he surrounds us with. But he didn’t take it lightly. He was badly shaken. He wept at the thought that I might have drowned. And not knowing the cause recalled the uncertainty he suffered during weeks of tests before he was diagnosed.

I was awakened to his vulnerability, and that I have to pay more careful attention to others, not just myself, on this unpredictable ride called life.

“In the Lineup” features Hawaii’s oceangoers and their regular hangouts, from the beach to the deep blue sea. Reach Mindy Pennybacker at mpennybacker@staradvertiser.com or call 529-4772.