An (eventually) fatal attraction…

Yet when I made that last (and sadly, final) crossing, in my mind the Key Bridge still had a shadowy, menacing aura about it. A black cloud of sorts that seemed to hang over it. The reason for this was obvious to me. One of my long time friend’s best friend passed away at the foot of the bridge in a most gruesome manner. I was not as close with my friend in those days, so I never got to meet his best buddy. But I had heard a lot of good things about him. My mom had also met this man and liked him. But for some reason it seemed, he had developed a bizarre (and eventually fatal) attraction to the Key Bridge. All of this was recounted to me by my friend, who was unfortunately privy to some of the more graphic details of what happened. Whenever this man found himself in a bad situation, unhappy with the way his life was going, he would jump in his car and head towards that towering roadway that spanned the Baltimore harbor. But something had always intervened. Perhaps he had warned friends or family members, and he turned away (or was otherwise dissuaded) at the last moment. Apparently this morbid on and off infatuation with the bridge went on for years ever since he was a teenager and continued well into adulthood.

Then came a day, not long before Christmas, when this man got in his car and headed west on the Baltimore Beltway. It was cold and dreary, perhaps not unlike the day I got lost and found myself facing that infamous crossing many years earlier. He drove out onto the bridge, stopping his car at the highest part of the span, and got out. Then he did the unthinkable. He climbed over the jersey wall and jumped. But he never made it to the cold murky waters below, as is the case with so many others who also made the final leap. Instead, he splattered onto the base of the bridge pier after falling almost 200 feet. The metal monster of my nightmares had tasted blood… Red pouring from a shattered body, soaking into the concrete, scarlet streamers dripping down towards the turgid waters below. Life draining away from an all too willing sacrifice, like that of a slain victim laid out on an ancient stone altar.

An impressive and vital piece of regional infrastructure had become sullied in my mind once I became aware of that tragic death. My initial dread of the Key Bridge was unfounded, but this subsequent event was all too real and sickening. Surely this poor man wasn’t the only victim of his own misery who chose that bridge as a way to end it all. And perhaps he wasn’t the only one to miss the river and drench one of its piers in gore. But my (and my mom’s) close social proximity to this person made it hit way too close to home. Every time I would see or hear anything about the Key Bridge, thoughts of this gruesome death would leap to the front of my mind. And it affected my friend even worse. One time he hailed a cab and then suffered a panic attack as the driver crossed the bridge on the way to his destination.