Congratulations on Seeing Becki at a Distance!

The tragedy of the woman on the pier will be unfathomable, but immediately apparent, even at great distance.  You'll feel compelled to approach her, but as you come closer you'll understand that it is absolutely necessary you stay back, that you remain an observer, that you not, in the most literal sense, advance upon the ethereally beautiful, tragically wounded young woman standing before you.

So you'll sit and watch as she stares out at the ocean, hand moving to and from mouth occasionally, clutching something tiny, white, a cigarette, you'll surmise.  You'll sit and watch and wait for a moment that will feel right, a moment that will feel appropriate, a moment that will permit you to approach her.  You'll wait a long while, past her supposed smoking, into her brief, furtive dance at the end of the dock, a fevered, kicking thing, as if she was trying to remove some sort of confusion from her life through violent movement.

You'll sit and watch patiently through all of it until the dance ends and the woman ties a rope around her neck, lifts up a massive rock, and steps off the edge of the pier.

You'll begin running before you know what your muscles are doing, before you've even seen her head fully slip below the waves.  The reality of what you just saw, the language for it, the words "suicide attempt," will not present itself to you until you are already halfway to the pier, twenty seconds into your dead run.  Your hands will already be trembling, your lungs burning from the gulps of air you'll be taking in, but you won't have time to register the pain, won't have even a moment to understand the anguish you're about to inflict upon yourself until you crash into the water, pocket knife already drawn, blade readied by a gesture you won't be able to recall.  As you stroke down towards her you'll feel your hands numbing, not from cold by from a lack of oxygen, a lack of properly oxygenated blood.  Adrenaline will keep your hands steady as they move, as the knife passes through the cord around the rock, as you grab her hands and yank her up towards the surface.  She won't struggle.  She won't look surprised.  She'll seem sad, but this woman will accept what is happening as just another part of life, another gesture towards death like the one she just made.

When you break the surface she'll be gasping for air.  She'll have been underwater for a little over two minutes, her face beet red, hair plastered to the sides of her face.  She'll be spitting out water, crying a little in the air.  You'll close your knife under water and wrap your arms around her, holding her against you as you kick towards shore.

"Are you okay?" you'll ask her, smell of salt water filling your nostrils as you drag her towards the beach.

"My name is Becki," she'll respond, voice trembling, you'll assume, from the cold of the water.

Congratulations on Seeing Becki at a Distance!