‘The tide was like a rope’: River rescue a reward for Beaufort’s beloved Dr. Tony Bush

It was just another afternoon at my nearly empty family medicine office — another day of triaging colds and allergies, headaches and anxieties from “the real thing” when Patricia Bush called my cell.

“Hey Mrs. Bush,” I answered Tuesday afternoon.

“Tony has fallen in the water!” she uttered in a frantic voice.

“I’ll be right there …” I said, rushing to my truck.

Dr. Charles “Tony” Bush has been practicing medicine in Beaufort since 1972, the first 30 years as a general surgeon and since then as a primary care doctor who now, in his 80s, has pared it down to the occasional flight physical.

Dr. Bush has served as Beaufort’s mayor pro-tem, and he is known for his many medical mission trips to Haiti.

My connections with him include being in his son’s class in kindergarten and first grade until Clay skipped second grade. I also bought the office he practiced in from 1972 until 1998. I am also privileged to be his family doctor.

Our houses are about two football fields down the street from each other in Spanish Point, and my office is across the entrance to the neighborhood.

I arrived at his house as an EMS paramedic was unloading the gurney from the ambulance. I ran around to the back of his neighbor’s house and he was sitting in the EMS stair chair — shirt off, hair wet, paramedics and firefighters all around him. He was alert, oriented, still a little deaf, but overall just fine.

Tony absolutely refused to be transported to the emergency room in light of the COVID-19 crisis.

So what happened?

In the Beaufort River

Marci Burris, a neighbor who also is a certified registered nurse anesthetist, told me she had seen Tony on his dock through her living room window. She turned, but passing the next window something in the water caught her eye.

She looked and it was Tony’s head bobbing in a brisk outgoing tide in the Beaufort River.

She darted out her door and waved to a workman at the adjacent house that is under construction. Fortunately, that project started by replacing the dock and Tony was now barely holding on to a brand new piling (no barnacles!) as the tide was sweeping over his head.

Marci grabbed two life vests from her own dock as two workmen from next door secured a rope and helped pull Tony onto shore. Somewhere in all of this Marci yelled to her 7-year-old son, Rocco, to call 911, which he did to initiate the emergency response.

Just that morning I had spoken to a patient about purchasing her recently-deceased husband’s oxygenator so I called her and ran to her house to pick it up. On the way, I did a phone consult with Dr. Peter Manos, our local beloved pulmonologist.

I returned to find Tony at his kitchen table, the usual spot that now serves as his desk.

Tony’s oxygen level was back up, after testing low at the river’s edge. As a Type I diabetic, he checked his glucose. It was a somewhat-low 87, so he popped himself an apple juice and said he felt “fine.”

Marci’s two beautiful kids, Rocco (age 7) and Miabella (age 4), who incidentally Dr. Bush always tells to wear a life jacket, presented him with a drawing admonishing him to “wear a life jacket.”

Circle of life

Marci unquestionably, unequivocally, and indisputably saved Dr. Bush’s life with the aid of the construction workers.

Tony said he was barely able to hold on to the piling and did not think he had another 30 seconds of strength when the rescuers came.

“The tide was like a rope just pulling me,” he said.

Marci estimated he was in the water about 5 minutes. They say he was knocked off the floating dock by a large boat’s wake.

So let me tell you a little more about this story.

Marci is married to Andy Burris, the son of another beloved Beaufort doctor who straightened many a kids’ teeth in Beaufort, including my own.

In 1982, on Christmas morning, a tragic accident occurred in the living room of the Burris’ house when Andy was accidentally shot in the femur by his older brother with a .243 caliber hunting rifle.

Andy was 7 at the time, the same age as Rocco.

The quick action of his father and their neighbor, Dr. Bernie Credle, stabilized Andy so that he could be rushed to Beaufort Memorial Hospital.

If you don’t believe in karma, that is fine.

I do, and Dr. Bush still does.

Because you know who operated on Marci’s husband and Rocco’s dad — Andy Burris — to save his life? None other than Dr. Tony Bush.

Dr. S. Clark Trask, MD is a Beaufort native who has a family medicine practice on Ribaut Road.