“Ouch,” he murmured to himself, as he stared at that number, thirteen. Jesus! Surely that wasn’t all about the same thing. No way that could be. Surely not. But the thought was just horrifying and mind-boggling. Were that many people unhappy? Another text came in.
That’s multiple bridges, not just this area.
Reading that detail brought a sigh of relief.Still way too high.
It is. It’s been much higher this year.
And why?
Still working on that.
Her responses were pointed, but she was talking to him.
He smiled at that and pocketed his phone. As he walked back, he thought he saw a young woman standing along the edge opposite him. His footsteps slowed. He didn’t know if it was the same one he’d seen before because he was too far away. As he slowly walked toward her, she looked at him nervously and then took several steps toward shore. He just stopped in place and looked over, but there was no way to cross traffic to get to the other side.
He just smiled at her from a distance. “Hey,” he said, “I’m not a threat.” She frowned at that. He immediately knew that was hardly the best wording. He shrugged. “I’m just walking up to the hill there.”
She nodded and said, “Sorry, I—it’s an instinctive reaction.”
“I get it,” he said, as he approached slowly. “I just talked to a young couple over there. They’re here for the first time in Vancouver, and she’s a journalist, looking at doing an article on the suicides off the bridge.”
She winced. “To even think like that,” she said, shaking her head.
“Depressing, isn’t it?”
“It is,” she muttered and looked over at the water.
“Have you ever thought about it?”
“What? No,” she said, but her words came too fast,… were too instant. And her voice was raised and nervous.
He smiled gently. “That’s good,” he said, desperate to memorize her features, hoping to get a picture of her face somehow. He brought out his phone and took a picture of the bridge around them. “Do you mind?”
She frowned and looked at him nervously. “Okay, that’s fine,” he said, and he took several all around for the view and of the bridge around them. When she relaxed a little bit, he turned, and, with stealth, took several photos of her face. Enough that maybe, if he were lucky, she could be identified.
He walked around her and said, “I really hope you don’t ever consider it.”
“No, of course not,” she said. “That would be foolish.”
“I don’t know about foolish,” he muttered, “but there is help if you need it.” Her next words broke his heart, and he wasn’t sure what to do.
“Sometimes there is no help available.”
At that, he stopped, but when he turned back to look at her, she was already walking away. “Hey, look,” he yelled. “If you need help, I can help.”
She just lifted a hand and waved and kept on going.
He wasn’t sure if she was trying to get away from him or just trying to get away from her life. Either way it wasn’t long before she picked up the pace and started to run. He was hesitant, not sure if he should go after her, since that would just make her run faster and would terrify her even more. As for himself, he sent the photos to Kate.
“This woman on the bridge,” he said in a voicemail, “she’s not wearing the same sneakers, but she looked like suicide was on her mind.”
As he walked back up the hill, Kate called him. “I can’t chase down everybody who’s walking on a bridge,” she said quietly.
“I know. I know that,” he said. “Just something was so weird about her. Something needy.”
“Did you try to talk to her?”
“I did, but she got nervous. She wouldn’t let me take her photo, and then she got even more nervous and just took off.”