Woman Marries Train Driver Who Saved Her Life Before Later Saving His

In 2019, Charlotte Lay met the man she would later marry on one of the most difficult days of her life.

On a fateful summer afternoon, the British nurse, now 33, was getting ready for her shift — but “wasn’t feeling quite right,” she recalled to BBC, revealing that had decided to end her own life near a railway station in West Yorkshire, England.

“I’d struggled with my mental health since my teens and I’d been in and out of the system since,” Charlotte told the outlet.

While her memories of that day are “blurry,” she remembers a train approaching on the tracks where she was near the Crossflatts station. “I remember seeing a man getting off the train and starting to panic and thinking he was going to tell me off,” she recalled of her now-husband, Dave Lay, 47.

“He approached me and said, ‘Hi, my name is Dave, are you having a bad day?’ ” Charlotte continued. “I said, ‘Yeah, just a bit.’ He went, ‘Okay, we can sit and talk until it feels better.’ ”

Dave, a train operator for Northern Rail, told the BBC that he remembers “kneeling down” in front of Charlotte and gently telling her they could talk until she felt “comfortable enough” to board the train and be taken to safety. They ended up talking for a half hour before Charlotte got into the train cab. She rode to a nearby station and was put into the care of the police.

The next day, Charlotte was keen to find the man who had been so kind and comforting to her amid her distress, so she posted a message on a local Facebook group for anyone who worked for Northern and knew Dave. “I’d have understood if he didn’t want to hear from me, but I just wanted to say ‘thank you’ for giving me the time and for treating me like I was [a] human being,” Charlotte told the BBC.

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One of Dave’s coworkers saw her appeal and passed along his phone number. Charlotte immediately sent a text to Dave, who had been equally keen to connect with her. “I needed to know she was all right,” he explained. “I’d contacted [the] police to try to find out what happened to her and just wanted to make sure she was safe.”

He added, “I felt like I’d had a duty to make sure she was all right. We’d had that rapport built by the side of the track. It was just nice to be able to make that difference to somebody.”

Two months after first exchanging messages, Charlotte and Dave met in person for a coffee date. By 2022, they were married, with Charlotte 22 weeks pregnant with their first of three children at the time.

In a surprising twist to their story, Charlotte unexpectedly saved Dave’s life. In 2020, he began experiencing back pain and she urged him to see a doctor. That July, he was diagnosed with testicular cancer.

Now, Dave credits his wife for making him take his ailment seriously. “I’d done 12 or 13 years in the motor trade working on cold floors and out in the elements, lifting and carrying silly things. I just put it down to a bad back,” he recalled to the BBC. “Charlotte kept saying, ‘Go to the doctor.’ I said it was just me getting old.”

Dave said a consultant at a hospital in Leeds told him he would no longer be alive had he not sought medical care and been diagnosed when he was. “Charlotte may say I saved her life, which I don’t know about really, but she saved my life as well,” he said.

The couple told the BBC they want to share their emotional story to bring hope to other people who may be struggling. “Life does get better. You just have to be here to see it,” Charlotte said, before noting the tremendous difference one person can make by simply offering their support.

“You don’t have to offer life-changing advice or say anything profound,” she explained. “Just sitting down with a cuppa can make all the difference.”

If you or someone you know is considering suicide, please contact the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by dialing 988, text “STRENGTH” to the Crisis Text Line at 741741 or go to 988lifeline.org.