Advent stories
Suicide watch.
The wind was bitterly cold as she walked. She was oblivious to the conditions as she passed beyond shelter, along the station platform. The lights shone in the darkness, fine sleet visible as it fell against the neon glow. She walked on.
He saw her on the screen. A dark shadow crossed his view and was gone. He flicked to another camera and saw her once more. She was hugging herself, a diminutive figure on the deserted trackside platform. He checked the signals. An express was due in the next few minutes, to thunder through the station. An automated warning message asked for any travellers to step back from the edge.
She heard the message. The timing had been correct. The wait would be over soon. A conscious decision to end it all. She felt the tears on her cheeks, rivulets of water on her frozen skin. A desperate and lonely figure poised in the snow.
He ran from the office out on to the platform. He knew what this was. Another determined to use his location. It was not the first. Always more at this time of year, when depression seemed to hit harder.
