The View from a Drawbridge

Last night I looked into the face of death, and the scary thing is that she looked like me. Or rather, how I would look if I had made much worse choices in life.

I was working on a bridge that is so large that it requires three bridgetenders per shift. Two of us act as flagpeople, standing on opposite ends of the bridge so that idiot drivers don’t crash the gates and drive into the drink when the center span is being lifted vertically by the third bridgetender. This means that as a flag person, I’m stranded on the street level as the bridge rises, and I have nowhere to go if a weirdo comes along. And we do get our fair share. This can be fun at one in the morning. Not.

So I was down there, doing my thing, and out of the shadows walks a skeleton. I got on the radio and called my coworkers.“Uh, guys? Keep an eye on me, will you? I’ve got a crazy.“ They can see me on camera. Not that they can do anything, but at least they can bear witness.

This woman was my height, but she couldn’t have weighed more than 90 pounds. Her skin was stretched so tightly that I could see the bones in her skull and elbows. Her hair was brown like mine, but so dry it seemed like it would crack and fall off if touched, and she had sores on her face and arms. She was probably my age, but she looked 40 years older.

She weaved her way toward me and kept saying, “I’ve got to go.“ And I was wishing she would go. Far away from me. Because she was a heroin addict, and I knew, without a doubt, that I was looking at a dead woman. She was beyond help. She was lost.

That was one of the longest bridge openings of my life. And before it came down completely, she had climbed over the sidewalk gate. One million pounds of steel could have easily crushed her foot, and I knew there was nothing I could do about it. She was way past listening to reason, and I wasn’t about to wrestle her to the ground. All she was worried about was getting to the methadone clinic on the other side of the bridge. Apparently she didn’t know it had been shut down months ago due to lack of funding.

Someone must have been watching over her last night, because she retained her limbs and went on her way. But as I watched her stagger off into the darkness, I couldn’t help but think that she was someone’s child, maybe someone’s sister or mother, and for all intents and purposes she was dead already. It was very sad.

Most of us don’t ever have to look death in the face. We keep that sort of thing at a distance from the general public. But last night I looked it right in the eye, and I hope to never have to see it again.

This looks just like the woman I saw, only she was even farther gone.

(photo credit: healingtalks.com)