02-03-2021, 09:38 PM
1
The Bridge
They had been talking for nearly an hour when the woman eventually climbed down from the iron parapet of the footbridge and began to walk slowly down the stairs, before stopping next to the man who had probably just saved her life.She was in her twenties and lately had felt more and more overwhelmed with things in her life, but if she had been asked, wouldn’t actually have been able to say one thing that really caused her to feel this way.
She hadn’t intended to end it all that day, but crossing the railway line, with the platforms and the bridge between completely bereft of people, she had just suddenly felt lost and alone.
Climbing first onto the ironwork she had sat for several minutes deciding what she should do next. She could simply climb back down now, and nobody would ever know.
But that was the problem, nobody ever would know. They would never even care, about her, about how she felt, about her life, or about what had urged her to do such a reckless thing.
Once she had given herself time digest all this, she decided she needed to be more assertive, and climbed unsteadily to her feet to stand between the huge rows of rivets, slowly swaying in the chill breeze.
Realising that she wasn’t high enough to do the job on its own, she chose to wait for a train to come at which point she would drop herself in front of it. If she fell, or rather jumped, she would undoubtedly be injured, but probably not killed outright. She couldn’t bear the thought of being in physical pain, possibly paralysed and trapped inside her own head with all the horrors that lived there, both real and imagined.
The irony was that it never occurred to her to think that the things she felt now would be transferred to the train driver, causing her or him to relive this moment and cause them the same torment that she felt.
She hadn’t seen the man arrive. He was in his fifties, dressed in somewhat old-fashioned working clothes including a real blue collar, and immediately struck up a conversation with her about nothing in particular.
She told him not to come any nearer, and he immediately complied. In fact, for the next fifty-five minutes, she hadn’t really noticed him move his feet at all.
He talked about himself, the life he had. His family. How hard it had been to find a job after losing his previous one. His wife’s illness. The difficulty he had providing for his family. Putting food on their table, and keeping a roof over their heads.
He told her about trudging from shop to factory to business, picking up odd jobs here and there for nearly a year, doing anything and everything he could, until one day a factory foreman had seen how hard he worked, and gave him a full-time job.
He told her how he had become so despondent at one point that he almost felt like ending it all himself. The only thing that stopped him was the thought of his family, and how they would, or wouldn’t cope, if he was no longer around. How people that knew him would feel. What they would think of his family. How they would have treated them.
He told her of the relief of getting a job, a purpose to live again. After that he gave thanks every day that he awoke, no matter what hardships that day would bring.
The woman hadn’t noticed the others arriving. Members of the public, some on their ‘phones, some filming her, Police shooing them away and sealing the entrance to both platforms.
She hadn’t heard the sirens or seen the paramedic arrive on his motorbike, or the ambulance with the man and woman standing nearby, one holding an Ambi-bag with oxygen bottle, and the other holding a blanket.
The man’s voice had been so soft and soothing, his tone so kind, intent when talking to her as if nobody else mattered, existed even.
Not trying to tell her what to do. She appreciated that. He cared, or at least that is how it appeared to her. When she spoke, he stopped and listened.
He didn’t ask her how she felt, or why she was doing this, but she told him anyway.
She didn’t hear the audible sigh from the onlookers when after twenty minutes she sat down on the parapet, although she did feel the coldness of the grey painted iron slowly seeping through her thin coat.
After another twenty minutes or so of talking and listening, she straddled the parapet. This caused a sigh to escape from the young female PCSO on the Northbound platform. She could see the woman clearly, but from where she had been posted by her sergeant, she could not see the person the woman was talking to. The officer could only make out some of what the woman on the bridge was saying, but couldn’t hear the other person at all.
Whoever it was, they were doing a good job. The woman had been talked down from an extremely precarious position to one that whilst still dangerous, was nowhere near as bad as it had been when she had arrived.
Hopefully it wouldn’t take much now for the woman to step back onto the bridge deck, and with luck she could then be persuaded to climb down the steps to her colleagues and medics on the Southbound platform.
The Police Station was close by and the duty sergeant had actually run the quarter mile to the railway station once the 999 call came in. He had been on his radio the whole the time, instructing the civilian desk clerk to call GWR and Network Rail as soon as he saw the report about a woman ready to throw herself off a bridge was true.
The woman had been so engrossed by the man on the platform it had not occurred to her in that time that the trains had stopped. The junction for the branch line to the local town was only a few hundred yards away.
When the Great Western Railway had been pushing the tracks steadily South-West from Bristol, the nearby town’s elders had ummed and aahed, and ahhed and ummed, whether or not the railway was a good thing.
Eventually the railway company had got fed up so decided to bypass the town completely. Fifty years later, the elders realised this had been a huge mistake, but it took another forty years before they were able to have the town linked to the main line. Instead of three or four trains an hour in each direction, the town station only got one an hour at best via the branch line.
The tiny village station had now become the centre of a dormitory and commuter town for Bristol, just over half an hour along the rail-lines. Thanks though to the quick thinking of the duty sergeant, and the quick response of the train operating company, no trains had passed through since the woman had arrived.
The man continued to alternatively talk and listen to the woman, and after a further ten minutes she finally planted both feet on the bridge floor. Encouraged by the soft voice of the man, she slowly made her way onto the platform where she was gently led by her hand to a bench seat by a paramedic who then wrapped a blanked around the woman’s shoulders whilst her colleagues began to check her over.
Radios crackled, voices shot across the airwaves, and feelings of relief swept across all those present. After fifteen minutes it was deemed safe to allow the trains to move that were being held back at stations and a series of signals for some distance in each direction. The first train through had stopped briefly, with several passengers looking at the group of people on the opposite platform, before moving off again.
Police officers stood with their backs to the railway lines in a semi-circle around the medics tending to the woman. She was alert and her whole demeaner had changed since coming down off the bridge. Looking past the officers, she saw the man facing her, still standing in the same spot as before, although she was a little unsure why nobody was paying him any attention.
He looked back at her, nodded, smiled, then turned to walk away. She drew a sudden breath ready to shout a warning, but never had the chance. With one foot on the edge of the platform, and the other poised mid-step in mid-air, the sloping front of the Penzance to Paddington train struck the man full square whilst travelling at sixty-eight miles an hour.
The woman looked first in horror, not understanding why the driver hadn’t sounded the horn, or even applied the brakes, futile though it would have been, then in fascination as the man passed through the train, or as she later thought, as the train passed through the man.
Then it was gone yet the man was still walking with his back to her, stepping purposefully towards the other platform, with his feet a clear yard off the ground.
When he got to the other side he turned and smiled again at the woman before slowly fading into nothingness.
In the two and a half seconds it had taken for the express train to pass through the station, the PSCO noticed a step change in the woman on the opposite platform.
She had seemed quite perky with her cheeks coloured by the cold wind, but afterwards her whole face was white, her skin almost translucent, and her eyes appeared to be staring at the Mendip Hills miles away in the distance, yet unfocused at the same time.
The officer had passed this way many times before, but had never noticed the placard next to the entrance, telling the story how a local factory worker and family man had saved many lives after a train had become derailed. He had run down the track waving a lantern in an attempt to stop the rapidly approaching through train. He had succeeded in doing so, but had slipped and been hit in the process, dying of his injuries on the platform in the very spot where a woman had listened to a man who had talked her out of suicide.
“Strange,” thought the junior officer as she looked across at the woman, “she looks like she has just seen a ghost.”
13-03-2021, 10:45 AM
7
Re: The Bridge
Thank you all for your comments. Two of my family members have mental health issues, both of whom have contemplated suicide at some point, so it is a subject very close to me.The story is based around a few real events, and the mental health issues facing many people at the moment.
The station is on the edge of the village where my Lovely Cousin used to live, and is on the main London - Penzance line, whereas the much bigger town nearby is on a branch line due to procrastination of the town elders.
There is a plaque on one of the platforms telling the story of a fatal train crash over a hundred years ago, and there have been two fatal accidents on level crossings nearby, one of which was a suicide.
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