The phrase "as if to save" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used to suggest an action that seems intended to prevent something from happening or to conserve something.
Example: "She spoke softly, as if to save her voice for the long meeting ahead."
Alternatives: "as though to preserve" or "as if to protect".
"They dive into it as if to save their lives.
As if to save me, the show began.
Then, often within just a few pages, he will turn around, as if to save himself from accusations of being a self-hating American, and extol our virtues.
"The goal was as certain as anything can be on wooden boards," he wrote, "and the digital clock recording the split times suddenly ceased to function, almost as if to save the German further visual embarrassment.
Each glass sheet shuddered slightly as it was turned this way and that, in the impossibly fragile manner of airborne soap bubbles, and my own arms kept going out toward it, as if to save the sheet from crashing to the floor — but, of course, no glass crashed.
And then out of nowhere, the ad appears as if to save me from myself.
If the phrase "civil war" has hovered over the crisis, it's because the world has been shy to declare it as such, as if wanting to save the final red card for a leverage at some point down the road.
It's not as if attempts to save Vestas can be passed off as throwing money at "sunset" or lame-duck industries.
Later he behaves as if trying to save her; in one episode he raises the raft over her as if it were a canopy.
But by 1836, both parents, the uncle to whom she was closest and her beloved sister had all died, causing Sarah Losh, who wore modified mourning garb for the rest of her life, to "burst into years of creativity as if trying to save something she had lost".
Pretending to save bodies was as profitable as pretending to save souls, if more vulnerable to disproof.
