Beacons of Hope

The stars were like beacons at first, close and all-powerful. After a few seconds they retreated back to their usual size, bright against the night sky like moth holes in the canvas of a tent.

The screeching of brakes and ‘Jesus, fuck!’ were the first things I heard. ‘Hello? Hi, ambulance please. Hi, yes, yes she’s breathing,’ came next.

At first the voice spoke only to the call handler, not to me. I wondered if I was dead or alive. I had hoped to hear nothing, a devastating crunch as my skull hit the tarmac and then... nothing. Instead, headlights bathed me in a nauseating, artificial stream of light and people started to gather around me, chattering incessantly amongst themselves in high-pitched, panic-stricken babble.

‘The ambulance will be here soon, hold on.’ It was the first time anyone had spoken to me directly. I instinctively turned to see the person’s face. ‘No, no, keep still, don’t move. You’ve fallen a long way. Just hang on.’ It was a man, I knew that much. I looked back up at the stars. They waxed and waned, much like the beam of a lighthouse. They were all there until I looked directly at one, and then it disappeared. They started to swirl like water draining away, and then the corners of my vision folded inwards. I was inside an origami model of the night sky.

The next thing I knew I was in an ambulance, with my head taped into a neck brace, strapped to a stretcher. The lights were burning into me, neon bright. A female paramedic was peering over me, asking me questions, trying to keep me awake. Sirens rang out and my head pounded, throbbing to the rhythm of my reluctant heart. I tried to fight against the restraints, but it was a wasted effort. My eyes rolled back into my mind again. Sleep beckoned.

I’d got away with a wound to the head and not much else, except a wounded sense of self respect. Everybody kept telling me how lucky I was that I hadn’t broken any limbs, or worse, my neck. That I hadn’t been hit by a car while lying in the road. I didn’t feel lucky. I had lost everything, failed at everything, even at ending my misery.

A porter came and wheeled me up to an assessment ward. He made idle chat. Did I have any pets? His dog had just had puppies. I had no pets; nothing relied on me, and I relied on no one, not anymore.

He reversed the bed into the empty bay and waved goodbye to me. I scrambled out of bed and pulled the curtain sharply around my bed space. A nurse came by a few moments later and drew the curtain back.

‘Someone will be along to do your observations shortly,’ she said.

Back in my bed, I surveyed my surroundings. There was a little pile of the remains of my clothes on the bedside unit. There was a man in the bed opposite in a striped football shirt. He offered me a sympathetic smile. A laminated wipe-clean sign stuck to the end of his bed told me his name was Graham. He had a cast on his right leg, from the foot up to the thigh.

I must have been looking at him for too long, because his obligatory smile became a radiant grin.

‘No such thing as privacy, is there?’ he said. I shrugged. ‘What are you in for?’ he asked, ‘If you don’t mind my asking, that is.’

I did mind him asking. I wanted to crawl under the thin hospital blanket and never come out, but I’m British and being impolite doesn’t come naturally to me.

‘I had a fall,’ I said. It wasn’t a lie. ‘What happened to you?’

‘Slide tackle. You should see the other guy.’

‘You fucked your leg then?’

‘Broken it in two places. I’m never going to live this down,’ he said, shaking his head. A mop of brown hair flopped across his forehead as he did. A nurse came by at that moment, wheeling a blood pressure machine behind her. She pulled the curtain across. Graham waved just before he disappeared behind it.

‘Imogen Webb?’ I half-smiled, the way you do when a stranger passes you on the pavement. She checked the hospital band around my wrist. ‘I’m just going to take your blood pressure.’

She unwound the cuff from its wires and wrapped it around my upper arm, securing the velcro. The machine whirred into action and began to inflate around my arm. I closed my eyes. This was all wrong. I hadn’t planned for all this.

‘Ninety-five over seventy-seven,’ she said. ‘That’s great.’

‘Ticker still works, then?’ I replied, disappointed.

She smiled at me.

‘A doctor will be along in a short while,’ she said, turning to leave. ‘Ah, here she is now.’ The doctor poked her head around the edge of the curtain; the nurse beckoned her in.

‘Imogen,’ she said. ‘You are one very fortunate lady. Your x-rays are all clear, there’s nothing structurally wrong with you except that laceration to the head that we’ve already sutured. We are going to keep you in overnight just to monitor you, after such a bang to the head it’s safest to keep a close eye.’ She stepped a little closer before continuing. ‘Can we talk briefly about how you ended up falling from the bridge? Imogen, did you mean to fall?’

I looked around, wondering if I could escape the situation. The only way out was past both the nurse and the doctor. I didn’t want to talk about it. Besides, it was a rhetorical question. I mean, who just falls off a bridge over the dual carriageway?

I insisted that I’d fallen. They obviously knew I’d jumped. I mean, technically it had been more of a dive. They wanted me to stay and speak with the psychiatric liaison team. I didn’t know what that entailed. Were they going to section me? Cart me off to some facility with white walls, white gowns, white pills in white paper cups? Whatever it meant, I wasn’t about to find out for a while, the psych team were a popular bunch apparently. The nurse handed me a call bell.

‘If you need anything, just press this. Even if you just want to talk.’

With that, they both retreated from my cubicle, pulling the curtain back once more, exposing me. I raked my fingers back through my hair, my eyes settling on Graham across the way. He was looking anywhere but at me. I let out a sigh, every carbon dioxide molecule heavy with dejection. I thought back to what had happened. I didn’t remember the fall, only that it seemed to take longer than I had envisioned. What I did remember was the cold sensation of the metal railings beneath my palms, and the absolute surety I’d felt that I was doing the right thing in the moments before I let go. I’d figured that the fall would knock me out at the very least, and that my dark clothing would render me invisible to oncoming traffic on the poorly lit route.

Graham came back from the toilet, shuffling along, hobbling on his good leg. Before returning to his bed space he stopped at the end of my bed.

‘Imogen,’ he said. ‘I’m so sorry, I overheard what the doctor was saying to you.’

I groaned inwardly, my stiff upper lip preventing me again from showing my true feelings. I looked him in the eye, my cheeks filling with colour.

‘I thought you meant you’d tripped in the garden. Did you jump off a bridge, Imogen?’

I reached backwards, prodding at the orange call button with an outstretched finger. A nurse came by quicker than I had hoped and shooed him back to his bed. He shot me a desperate, sorrowful look.

The night was long, punctuated by nurses checking my observations what seemed like every fifteen minutes. I hardly slept. Sitting up in bed at some unearthly hour of the morning, I peered around at the ward in the dim light. If I was going to make a run for it, it was going to have to be in my hospital gown, as my clothes had been cut from my limbs while I was lying in the road. I crept to the edge of my cubicle to peek around the curtain. Two nurses were standing right by the door. I gave up and climbed back into bed. I was tired, so tired.

It was 6am before psych liaison made their appearance. It was two men in everyday clothes. Only one of them did the talking, the other just stared at me as if he was trying to see into my soul. I maintained my position that I had fallen from the bridge. I told them I didn’t remember.

Breakfast came and went. I declined the offer of soggy weetabix. The doctors appeared on their morning rounds, consulting with all patients individually. They were waiting on some blood results of mine. The stirring across the way alerted me to the fact that Graham was being discharged. A man who I presumed was his significant other had come to collect him. Graham had been given a set of crutches, which didn’t look like they made walking any easier.

As he passed by, he left a folded slip of paper on the over-bed table at the front of my cubicle. He quickly left with his partner in tow, without even so much as a glance in my direction. I shuffled to the end of my bed to reach the table, unfolding the scrap of paper torn from a notebook.

Dear Imogen,

I’m sorry if I was intrusive. I’m also sorry that you felt that jumping was the only way forward.

Whenever I meet someone who has survived a suicide attempt, it feels so special to be talking to them. This could have been a conversation stolen by mental illness, by hardship and difficult days, but it wasn’t, and now we get to have it. Here’s to carrying on the conversation. Graham.

His mobile number was scrawled underneath. His writing was messy, it reminded me a little of my younger brother’s. I scrunched the paper up in my fist.

They discharged me later that afternoon. I was surprised, I’d had a foreboding that I’d be detained in one way or another. But as I wasn’t talking, I suppose there wasn’t a great deal they could do. They said that the notes would be sent to my GP, and that I should receive a follow up appointment through. They sent me off in a set of hospital scrubs, with my minced clothes in a carrier bag. A nurse found me a coat from lost property and called me a taxi to take me home.

The taxi took me home via the dual carriageway. I saw the bridge coming up in the distance. Fragments of memory flashed into my consciousness, snapshots. Watching the cars from the bridge, tumbling forwards, the walrus moustache of the man who found me. I closed my eyes until we were under and beyond the bridge and it was no longer visible in the rear view mirrors.

Back at my flat, everything was immaculate. I had spent the days prior to the jump cleaning thoroughly and labelling boxes to go to charity and similar ones to go to family. It had given me a sense of peace, knowing it was one thing less for my family to have to deal with. I hadn’t pictured I would ever have to come back here. Climbing the stairs, I felt like a ghost returning to its previous haunts, if you’ll pardon the pun. A dead woman walking.

Up in my bedroom I opened the window. It was a cool, autumn afternoon. I normally smoked on the patio out the front of the block, but so did several other people and I wanted to be alone. I stuck a hand into the pocket of my coat, reaching for my lighter, and felt what I thought was a receipt. I pulled it out. It was the note from the guy from the ward, Graham.

I straightened out the note and set it down on the windowsill. Reading it again, my nose stung as I tried not to cry. The words were kind, unsolicited. It seemed like it had been a long time since I’d felt that kind of kindness. Life had been tough, to say the least, for the last six months, ever since my brother had moved to Australia, I suppose. My closest friend was now the best part of ten thousand miles and twelve time zones away, and subletting his room had proved complicated and futile. As such I had paid the rent on the whole flat single-handedly ever since, and had driven myself into crater of debt. When I lost my job, a week before I jumped, life didn’t seem worth living any more.

I contemplated burning it and almost let the note fall from the window, but something nagged at me to call. Hesitant, I dialled the number, cigarette balanced on my lower lip, with no prior inkling of what I was going to say.

The phone rang three times before he picked up. I said nothing, not even a hello.

‘Imogen?’ he said. I kept quiet. ‘I was hoping you’d call. I know you probably think I’m an interfering bastard, but you struck me as someone with a story to tell and nobody to tell it to. If you need a friend, Imogen, you’ve got one.’

For the next few nights, Graham rang me exactly at 7pm. He was easy to talk to; he filled all the silences. He kept me updates on his adventures with the crutches. It gave me something to look forward to. He coaxed details of my struggle from me gently, considerately, like he was trying to provide aid to an injured wild animal. He was distant enough from me emotionally that I could talk to him without feeling like I was burdening family or friends.

Ben, Graham’s partner, dropped him outside my block on the Saturday evening.

‘You look shattered,’ he observed. ‘Have you slept since the hospital? Have you been eating?’

‘All right, mum,’ I said, smiling.

He took me to get dinner at a little Italian place a short hobble from my flat. I was ravenous, cramming pizza into my mouth like I was stuffing a turkey. He watched on, contented.

‘Graham,’ I said, placing my knife and fork down in the centre of my empty plate, ‘why are you so kind to me?’

‘You seemed like you needed a little kindness.’

After dinner, he took me to a large playing field, not far from my flat. There was a cricket pitch complete with sight screens at each end. Further up was a football pitch. Separating the two plateaus was a steep grassy incline. The field was right on the edge of the countryside, so was dark at that time of the evening.

‘This is where I buggered my leg,’ he said, pointing up to the football field. ‘I’ve played football here since I was a kid. I’ve always thought it was pretty peaceful once the goals are folded away for the evening.’

There was a cricket pavilion in one corner of the field, oak trees around the perimeter, and, away from the buzz of the town centre, a reposeful ambience. It was the sort of place I imagined hedgehogs and rabbits scurrying from the undergrowth under the dim glow of the moon.

He led me to the grassy bank, instructing me to sit down and lie back. He sat down next to me and did the same. He nudged me with his elbow.

‘Only in the darkness can you see the stars’, he said.

I breathed a heavy sigh. It was corny but true. Graham took my hand in his and we lay there looking up at the stars for a while, in silence. Stars are strange. Some of them are so far away that they appear to us even though they burned out long ago. I’d been living that way for a while, appearing capable and strong to others on the outside, but rotting on the inside. A man I’d met, purely by the chance of his misfortune and my sheer luck, had changed that. There was a tiny spark within me again, only burning faintly but burning nonetheless.

I let my eyes focus on the stars. There was minimal light pollution in the darkness of the field, so hundreds upon hundreds were visible. At first, they were all there until I looked directly at one, and then it disappeared. The more I looked, they became beacons. Beacons of hope.