Lethal beauty

At the very moment Kevin Hines launched himself over the guardrail and plummeted toward the water below, he changed his mind: "Oh s -- ," he thought. "I don't want to die! What am I going to do?"

He plunged headfirst, gaining velocity until he was speeding far faster than the traffic above him crossing the Golden Gate Bridge. The distance from bridge to water is the equivalent of 25 stories, and he was conscious the whole way. The descent passed quickly, as if he were flying. Yet in mid-fall he was strong enough to turn his body into a sitting position, so he hit feet first. He sank beneath the calm, frigid water. Deeper and deeper. Far scarier than the screamingly silent fall was the darkness beneath the surface of the bay. The deeper he sank, the darker it became.

The pain was indescribable. The impact had broken his back and shattered vertebrae. And then he began, with the instinct for survival of any animal, to swim upward toward light and air. When he broke through the surface of the water he was stunned to be alive, and momentarily thought he was hallucinating. He tried to swim toward a bridge pylon, but his pain overwhelmed him and he began to sink beneath the water again, struggling against dying. He managed to bring his head above water when he felt something -- something alive, a creature -- brush his legs.

"I didn't die," he thought, "and now I'm going to be eaten by a shark." The creature kept circling him, nudging him, preventing him from sinking back into horrifying darkness. He was aware of the echo of traffic, and car horns. Then he heard a boat motor. All of a sudden, hands were grabbing him, hauling him up, laying him on a board. A man in uniform -- it was the Coast Guard that rescued him -- was asking questions.

"What did you do?"

"I jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge."

"Why?"

"I wanted to kill myself." He was 19.