The Bridge

I cycle over a road bridge on my regular ride out of Oxford. It crosses a road with four lanes and lots of traffic: the A40 Northern Bypass. On the bridge, there was a stationary police car with lights flashing, and a police officer shouting towards a woman who’d climbed over the bridge guardrails. It seemed she might jump. Terrifying.

The woman on the bridge

I stopped peddling my cycle and I wondered what I should do. I got off my bike and I started to cross the road to the officer and the crying woman. I couldn’t see her very well but I heard her cry out – I’m not going back!

The officer asked me if I knew her, and told me to wait on the other side of the road which I did.

It’s called ‘bystander apathy’ when a person stops and they are frozen and don’t take action in such a such situation. I couldn’t think what do. I wanted to help but I thought it better to wait for the police officer to tell me what I should do next. I shouted out to the police offer – “Is she called so-and-so” – the name of someone who I know that has a mental health condition. The officer shouted back no.

So I left – there was nothing more I could do – surely, and hopefully the officer had some training for this sort of situation. I didn’t want to act and precipitate the woman falling or indeed jumping! As I rode away, I felt upset and confused. If that were me on the bridge, the woman who was apparently threatening to kill herself, what would I want. What would I want a bystander like me, to do?

Later

I kept thinking about what I’d seen as I rode my bicycle. Back home, I looked on the website of a local newspaper and their ‘live reporting’ page. It said the road bridge was shut with long traffic delays. There were fire crews, police and medical assistance. I checked the website a few times that day, and finally some indication of what had happened: the bridge was closed due to a mental health episode. But no indication if the woman was safe. Nothing more.

A week later

A week later, I again crossed the road bridge on my bicycle, and I saw a few notices attached to the bridge guardrails: handwritten notices; laminated; and tied with string to it. Apparently, messages to a person in distress – like the woman I’d seen the previous week.

I don’t know who wrote those notices. Perhaps the woman on the bridge was safe she wrote those notices as a kind of coming to terms with it. A creative closure if you will. An act of hope. Or maybe, something to read if she’d return?

Beside the notices, I also photographed the bridge; the traffic flying-by underneath it at great speed with a whoosh and a roar. That woman must have heard it doubly so when she was on the edge of the bridge in a situation of great peril and jeopardy.

Underneath the bridge, there are columns which support its structure. Looking at one of the columns, I saw a painting on it – possibly painted with fingers and hands, in green, black and red. I don’t know who painted it.

It showed a tree, the ground – or the road perhaps, and a heart. Maybe another act of hope and coming to terms with what happened? I really don’t know. It might simply be my creative imagination. Perhaps I wanted it to be that – a kind of closure for something which I had found disturbing.

An ending

I don’t know who was that woman on the bridge. Nor that she made the notices or the painting that I mention but I hope she is alive, cared-for and loved.

I hope she is alive, cared-for and loved

Beauty all around

Under the bridge, I also found these interesting and indeed beautiful things – a seed head, and some paving that reminded me of a minimalist sculpture. Now I could see something different to the scene I’d witnessed, and that is good.