Make a Wish || Rhett and Link

Chapter 19 - Swimming

****Brian's Point of View***** (AKA the man on the bridge)

I rushed as fast as I could to the railing. She had fallen. My heart began pounding in my chest. There was the sound of the water crashing.

I didn't even think about it as I pulled my shoes and jacket off before climbing onto the railing and jumping in after her. She couldn't die. She just couldn't.

I crashed into the water almost seamlessly. I silently thanked my swimming days. I looked around in the murky water for anything, anything at all.

I used all of my strength to pull myself down into the water. Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted a hand. Her hand. I swam down and grabbed her, before pulling the both of us back to the surface.

I broke the water and gasped for breath, before dragging her over to the water's edge. The orange beanie she was wearing had fallen off and must've sunk to the bottom. She was unconscious.

I moved my ear to her mouth to try and listen for some breathing. Nothing. I started to panic. She couldn't die like this. I grabbed her wrist and dug my thumb around for a pulse. I found a really weak one. I knew she only had minutes if something didn't happen.

My phone was still up on the bridge, and there weren't any other people around. Expected of course, it WAS 2 in the morning.

I tipped the girl onto her side and a trickle of water flowed out of her mouth. She must've swallowed a whole heap of river water.

When the trickle stopped I check her wrist again. She was still with us, but her face was going blue.

I tipped her back onto her back and began pumping in the middle of her chest. "Don't you dare leave me!" I panted.

"Hey! Hey you! What's going on down there?" a man yelled, running down to us. His face went pale when he saw the child I was desperately trying to save.

"Call an ambulance!" I shouted at him. He fumbled with his phone and punched the number in, before handing it back to me.

"911, what is your emergency?"

"I need an ambulance!" I yelled, panting. "There was this girl, and she fell off a bridge, and almost drowned, but I jumped in, and her pulse is very weak and she's not breathing!"

"We're sending an ambulance to your location" The operator said. "What other information can you give me?"

I threw the phone back to the other man and he started telling the operator about her hospital gown and other things while I did my best to revive her. I was constantly checking her pulse. It was getting weaker by the minute.

There was the sound of sirens in the distance and the other man ran up to show them down to the river bank where we were situated.

"Come. On!" I said, pushing down hard one more time.

The girl took a deep gasp and rolled over, vomiting the water up. I breathed a sigh of relief.

"She's down here!"

The paramedics dragged me away as they began checking her for signs of life. I turned to the stranger. "We saved her." I panted.

"No man, you saved her." he said.

One of the paramedics took me up to the ambulance and wrapped me in a blanket to preserve my body heat. After all, I had gone swimming at 2am. She started questioning me about what happened.

"What's your name sir?"

"Brian. Brian Sowsay." I rasped, still trying to catch my breath.

"Okay Brian, How'd she fall?"

I gulped. "I was driving past the bridge and she was standing there, on the edge of the railing. I jumped out and tried to talk her down. She eventually started to climb back over, but the wind picked up and blew her over."

"So it was a suicide?"

"Well, sort of. It started out as that, but she was climbing back over when she fell."

"I'm going to put it down as a suicide."

I nodded awkwardly.

"Do you know her name?"

"No, I've never met her before."

"What do you know?" she asked.

"She told me she had terminal brain cancer. Her parents are dead. That's all I got out of her." I said.

"I think we can safely assume her mental health is not the best." The paramedic said, writing something else down.

I nodded. "Yeah. She's probably not the cheerful person alive."

"Okay, so after she jumped, what happened next?"

"I jumped after her."

"What?"

"I lost my daughter to suicide about 2 years ago. I wasn't going to let her die. So I jumped in the river. I found her unconscious under the water and dragged her to the surface. I found a pulse, and I started CPR. Then some other guy came by and he called an ambulance."

"You're a hero."

I chuckled awkwardly. "Me? no. I'm just glad she didn't die as she jumped off of that bridge."

The paramedic wrote something else down and I pulled the blanket a little tighter. I could only imagine how that girl was feeling.

"Make way!"

The paramedics ran up, the girl on the stretcher and loaded her into the ambulance. One of them turned to me.

"Do you want to come?"

I didn't even have to think. I nodded and sat down to her. She was barely conscious and they had strapped an oxygen mask to her face.

"She's inhaled a lot of water. We've got to get there fast." The paramedic told me. "Do you know her name?"

"No," I said. "But she's wearing a hospital bracelet."

The paramedic lifted up her wrist to have a look. "Cooper. Her name's Cooper."

"Cooper." I said. "Your time to leave this world is not today."