On The Bridge (5 page)

Mick and Thompson were folding over in hysterics by now. Their blatant disregard for his sincerity made him mad, and he stepped off the exercise bike and flung the couch cushions at them.

“Whatever pills they got you on, dude, I want some!” Mick squealed.

“Laugh it up, jerk-offs. You’ll see,” he said, but their laughter kept scratching the inside of his mind. His temper warmed him, but all he did was lower his voice at the two idiots before him.

“You’ll see.”

Twenty-three-year-old Krista sat staring blindly at the empty luminescence of the unforgiving screen with her hands sleeping steadily on the keyboard. Her black hair edged over her eyes, but she did not need to look through them. Her mind was far away, drowning in the musical thrall of the jazz of her Sting album, placing her in another world so deeply tucked that she could not, would not wish to, escape from the atmosphere of emotions it rained on her empty heart.

The cursor pulsed rhythmically in front of her, beckoning for her to type, but she simply could not find herself moving just yet. It was so sweet in her ears and it melted itself over her soul, the voice of the man who had escorted her through so many life experiences and heartbreaks that she had now considered him a roommate.

Finally his midnight rasp faded into the end of the song and she realised that Sting had now abandoned her to the dread and dedication of her work. She came from her pleasurable oblivion like a newborn calf, eager to venture, but still a captive of the safe place she had just gestated in for a few minutes.

Her upper arms and thighs yielded old scars from under her sleeves and the hem of her denim shorts. The lashes were thick, but not too long in length, carefully made almost invisible to any eye which did not look for them with the prolonged healing of Bio Oils and Vitamin E she spent every morning and night applying.

The windows of her third-floor apartment took turns lapping at their hinges, fixed, but still movable by the charm of the soft wind, while far in the distance she could smell rain coming. Her computer had finished playing the Sting folder and Krista looked at the toolbar with a weary demeanour, rolling her eyes back in her head, lazily sliding her index finger over the choices of music files presented to her. Her heart weighed heavy again today and she knew she had to snap out of the melancholy quickly or become its victim. Besides, she was running out of skin to carve at this rate and her only salvation, after therapy and medication had failed her, was music.

It was free, easy to obtain and completely void of side effects, save for the odd emotional wave that caught her too strongly. At least it didn’t screw up her liver or cost her a fortune, leaving her spitting out teeth, gaining weight or crying in front of a stranger at sixty bucks an hour – still not changing a damned thing about the problem. Why bother putting band aids on a broken bone? Some things are just made for certain things and are absolutely useless to others. A bandage doesn’t treat a cough; neither does a headache tablet patch a burn wound.

Therapy and medication seemed to be those to Krista’s psyche and the only thing that helped her, even a little, was the frequencies shuddering through her being when music flowed through her. It was just over a year since she gave up cutting. It was quite the feat for someone like her, who believed like many Christians that the blood is the life and the solace of controlling your body’s fate with a dangerous instrument; watching the pain physically come outside was addictive and empowering.

Such bad habits were the reason she had to give up her career in law enforcement, lacking the self-control needed of an officer being trusted by society to carry a gun. Her rookie year started off as well as could be desired, but one night she had to talk a sixteen–year-old basketball player out of utilising the slipknot he had so expertly tied around his neck. The boy was a star shooter, well loved, well known and firmly on his way to a free ride at the University of Texas.

If only his heart was as strong as his free throw. Krista saw the hurt in his wet eyes as he recited the name of the girl who had cheated on him over and over in a maniacal repetition, dismissing every word Krista attempted to inject in his positivity before he finally stopped silent, blew her a kiss and fell back from the top railing of the bleachers. The rope snapped taut before her disbelieving eyes and as his neck broke, the lower part of his legs hit the floor in recoil, shattering both his shins before he even stopped kicking.

She thought she was okay. Everything continued as always and she found herself pleasantly capable of dealing with what she saw, until she woke up two weeks later in her car with blood on her hands, having no inkling of what had happened.

The PD benched her for emotional distress and she resigned before facing formal charges of attempted murder on her lenient partner who understood her frame of mind prior to the attack in which he was convinced she had blacked out. They called her a loose cannon and a psycho and she was constantly tempted to prove them right, so she left and got a job as a veterinary assistant, playing with puppies and kittens all day, the risk of being bitten better than the risk of losing her mind.

Finally she shed her laziness and picked a folder on the computer as she always did when she went online to chat. She selected Rammstein with a self-satisfied grin, minimized the music player and logged into her most frequented site. The password loaded her profile and the ever–so-familiar red and black gritty image of the website bled all over the width of her computer screen. Krista laid back, swallowed half a glass of strawberry milk and tapped her bare foot on the floor as the music thundered over her, making her feel like a demigod in an oversized T-shirt. Her name came on the screen with two new comments on her last post.

She practically lived on Suicidewitness.com and opened her first message from one of her online friends, King Midas, for today: “Dear Suicide Queen…”

It had been more than two weeks since Doug witnessed the atrocity on the bridge, and he was taking his pills for the first while, but as the days progressed, he was relieved to find that he would have no problem weaning himself from the meds Dr. Lamaskaya had prescribed for him. Although Jean had initially kept her son from all reports in the news and on television pertaining to the accident, she now found him to almost be back to his old self and with his silliness and teasing nature intact.

He had been napping in his room while she got on with her housework, and after a while Jean granted herself a bit of a break. She made herself a hearty cup of coffee, too hot to drink just yet, and opened the newspaper. After perusing all the short articles, jokes and looking at the pictures, she found a picture article on page 3 that looked all too familiar. There he was, the man from the bridge.

“That’s the guy from the accident,” Doug said suddenly behind her, and she jumped with a start.

He saw the photo from behind her as he came into the kitchen. The heading said
Respected Surgeon Commits Suicide
and the sub text concisely removed the mask from the man who had roamed Doug’s nightmares almost every night since.

The paper stated how the doctor’s colleagues and close friends, when interviewed, did note that in the days leading to his suicide, he had been quite depressed, but not enough to cause grievous concern. Nobody knew the cause of his state of mind at that time, but apparently he had not behaved out of the ordinary, thus not causing any alarm.

“Doug! Don’t read or think about this man,” his mother said. “It is not healthy to immerse yourself in something this bad. Yes, it happened. It was awful. It’s over now and we don’t have to give it that much thought anymore, you know?” she tried hard to sound supportive, but her voice fell on Doug’s ear much as his father’s did – preachy and void of understanding his need to work this thing through to the end. In his opinion, she did not see how well he was adjusting.

“I’m fine. I just wonder what drove him to it. Do they say what made him do it?” he peeked at the paper.

“You’re not fine,” Jean surprised him, withholding her usual support, “You really don’t have to act tough, Doug. Your father isn’t here, but it is time you really do let go now. In a way your dad is right. There is no use wallowing in it.”

“I’m not. It’s just so final. I mean, what could have made him end his life just like that?” he said with sincere curiosity and poured himself some coffee. “I mean, can you imagine how that guy must have felt deep inside, someone who obviously had money and a good job?”

“Money and a good job don’t make your life perfect,” Jean passed him a stern glance for his shallow mind-set.

“It helps,” he pestered her with it.

“Material things aren’t everything, Douglas.”

“But he could have fixed whatever the problem was, you know? And he chose to just stop everything he had going for him,” Doug wondered out loud.

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” she rose and went to rinse out her cup, “and neither should you. Now, have you started studying for this week’s Biology? Your marks can do with some picking up, you know.”

“Don’t tell me you don’t think about it, mom. It’s ridiculous what he did, but it was his only choice, according to him.”

“That’s enough now!” Jean raised her voice in annoyance. “Get it out of your head and get on with life. We all have to get on with life and I am trying hard to do better myself.”

She hesitated at first, but finally spat out inadvertently what she had held inside for so long as she rolled up the newspaper and tucked it under her arm. “Besides, you are not the only one who saw it happen!”

Doug was speechless.

His mother realised that she had just retracted her pity for him and placed it squarely on herself, something she had never done before, and before he could reply, she abandoned her dishes and left the kitchen, ashamed of her revelation, her vulnerability and her apparent self-pity. Jean held her hands over her mouth as she went upstairs, shocked by her own words. It was out now. Now it was known.

Doug went to his room and did not appear to be as taken aback by Jean’s words as she was, although he did feel a bit betrayed by her cold shoulder. She was not entirely herself lately, but Doug thought it to be some strain between his parents or perhaps she was just feeling under the weather. As he walked into his room and closed the door behind him, he realised that normally his mother’s latest words would have crippled his feelings, but here he was, so embroiled in this suicide business and the reasons for such things that his own mother’s upset was diminished in its shadow.

Night after night he was subjected to the same miserable nightmare, waking in a cold sweat and a palpitating heart of terror leading the way. But by now he had a system, consisting of a towel in his nightstand drawer, readily available to wipe the sweat and the remnants of hell from him each time he was jerked from sleep. Doug had become so used to the dreams, their recurrent theme and perfectly timed consequence, that eventually he hardly considered them anymore. Of course, while dreaming through them, he’d still be as terrified as the first time, but upon waking, his towel ritual and his composure would be followed by another sleeping shift unlike the other. He would then wake fresh and rested as if he had had no demons at all.

Why bother telling anyone, he thought. They would all react the same – ridicule, bad advice and aggression – things he did not need anymore. His nightmares had now become closer companions than any person he could think of. They knew his thoughts, his feelings and still they did not judge him. In fact, they promoted his fight against the feeble-minded people he had to deal with in everyday life, therefore making his demons and his troubled mind his reason for dealing with the ordeal by himself.

Doug did feel a little twist in his thought, pondering on the recurrence of the dreams and the fact that they did not subside, or even change even slightly. Perhaps he was not healing as swiftly as he would have liked to think…or as his father thought, for that matter. He opened his window in the dead of night and marvelled at the peace around his home. There was an odd irony, much like the earlier pain and peace on Mick’s lawn that time, which prevailed, it seemed, throughout life’s threads.

The late doctor came to mind once more, his faint smirk and his hidden reasons. Doug could not help but wonder if this man had some sort of telepathy with him, or if his spirit had roamed restlessly in pursuit of Doug’s understanding, constantly attempting some psychic contact with the young man, because the hold the good doctor had on him was unnatural. He had never cared much about such things as suicides or the reasons people had to complete such morose acts, but now he was nothing short of obsessed with it. It had hit a nerve with him, but why, if not for some supernatural connotation? A really scary thought occurred to him: What if the suicidal man would not stop pestering him, simply because perhaps he wanted Doug to go with him? His hair raised on his arm.

A more frightening thought dawned upon him. Could he perhaps be suicidal by nature and not have known it until presented with the possibility? His hands gripped the windowsill tightly under the strain of a heavy subject he did not want to confront, but had little choice.

Doug rejected both of these ideas violently. In the first place, he didn’t believe in stuff like telepathy. That was superstitious hogwash, like zombies and evil spirits. Secondly, he was certain that he wasn’t suicidal. Sure, what he told his friends that day about his shimmering future, the successful life that was waiting for him was a lot of bull, but it was not as farfetched as it sounded. He was intelligent and hardworking, so he could not possibly turn out to be a failure. And besides, life was fun for him. He was convinced that it was going to become more fun as he morphed into an adult, with all the perks of being mature just adding to the excitement of growing up. Being an adolescent was a pain sometimes, true enough, but that stage in his life was short-lived and not always as bad as it sounded. His parents were alright, he had to admit, even when they could be unreasonable sometimes, but they allowed him far more than some of his school friends, who were punished, reined in and some even abused. He had it good, considering. No, he wasn’t going to commit suicide. He was not the type. No way, no how!

Across from him, perched on the roof of his neighbour’s house, an owl watched him, staring at the juvenile being wrestling with things meant for adults. It did not move, apart from the occasional blink, giving it the impression of understanding Doug’s thoughts. It made the young lad smile just slightly, and he went back into his room and closed the windows, basking in the pale blue of the aquarium.