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All, he said, felt lonely. "It is a cry for help," he said. "They often do it in daytime so they would be seen, they want attention, love." Only a couple weeks ago, a 22-year-old girl threw herself off the bridge near Grbic's restaurant. He was there to pick her up and ask: "Why did you do it?" "For my boyfriend," she replied. "Do you think he would do it for you?" he asked in return. Grbic said the girl was conscious and clear-minded when he plucked her out of the water. In winter, however, it is a question of minutes before people will lose consciousness in the freezing Danube and drown. On one of those days, in mid-January about seven years ago, Grbic was just preparing to turn his boat to the shore and go home
-- when he heard a scream. An 18-year-old woman going through a mental crisis had burst out of her parents' car at the bridge, taken off her jacket and jumped, shouting: "Goodbye,
Mom!" Grbic said something had made him stick around: "It was a very windy day.
A few minutes later and I would have gone." The girl, Grbic said, is the only one who has stayed in touch. Every January she comes to his fish restaurant to celebrate her "second birthday." She is married now and has a child. Grbic was invited to the wedding reception. "My heart leaps every time I see her," he said. Grbic has little or no track of the others he saved. It would be nice, he says, if they came to tell him how they were over a brandy at his restaurant. "I gave them a second chance and it was up to them to use it well."
[Associated
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