i could have been writing.

It was also before I got my first cell phone (a Blackberry, obtained in 2007).

There was a celebration planned for the evening, and I was meeting Jayme outside of K-Mart, by the Cooper Union Cube. I’d talked to her before leaving my apartment to confirm our rendezvous. We were going to pick up some party supplies, likely something whimsical or incongruent, because that’s the sort of thing that amused us.

This was a familiar commute for me; Park Slope to East Village was a trek I made at least weekly for a standing social engagement. So, I was very familiar with the route and easily able to estimate my arrival time, even accounting for possible weekend disruptions of service. When the train pulled up to the Grand Army Plaza platform, I stepped into the blissfully air-conditioned car with relief. In summer I often felt like I was drowning in the subterranean tunnels of the MTA system, where often I could see the moisture in the air.

I sat on the molded plastic seat and enjoyed the gentle rumble and sharp squeal of metal as the train made its way along the route from one island to another. Then we came to a stop, the tunnel dark around us, a shadow of graffiti dimly visible in the gloom. This was also familiar. Perhaps waiting for a train ahead to clear from the next station. I should have brought a book, as my only reading materials were the Doctor Zizmor banner ads plastered above the windows, or the “If you see something, say something” posters that were ubiquitous at the time. I quietly prayed that no one had seen something.

The conductor made an announcement that there was a delay in travel, shortly before the power cut out completely. Things went dim inside the car, and without the air flow, it also got very quiet. Which is when I heard it.

“OW! OW! It hurts!”

The sound was a bit muffled, and coming from… below?

And then more sound, as the other passengers on the train started talking to one another. You see, that was the thing about the city. Most of the time, people politely ignore each other as they go about their business. But this had stopped being the liminal space between one station and the next — and the pretense of our invisible bubbles evaporated.

A middle aged woman who worked as a nurse at Kings County hospital reasoned that it likely wasn’t a jumper this deep in the tunnel. She’d seen some of those before, but this far in, it was likely someone living down here. Her calm demeanor helped to soothe my own horror, as the sounds of the man outside continued. A man suggested that we move to the other end of the car, where the cries might not be so audible. Meanwhile, a different woman was starting to experience the earliest stages of claustrophobia, and we worked to calm her and remind her that we weren’t going to run out of air just because the fans had stopped.

Eventually, we could see the bobbing lights of the first responders approaching. How they extracted the man from between the train car and the tracks is a mystery to me. I didn’t want to know at the time, and still don’t really want to think about it now. 

A while after that, the power was restored and the train crawled into the next station, which had been just barely visible on the horizon the entire time. They made everyone disembark. At the time I found this annoying, as we’d already been delayed for so long. In retrospect, I suppose that even if there wasn’t any official investigation needed, the poor conductor was probably feeling really shaken and wouldn’t have wanted to finish their shift after what had happened.

When I finally arrived at my destination, I was relieved to find Jayme still waiting for me. And when I explained to her that the delay was neither construction, nor a suspicious package, but rather a person, her eyes got big as she said “Holy shit.” The rest of my day continued on as planned, just slightly delayed.

I never learned what happened to the man. Here, in my small hometown, anyone who is curious will know the outcome of every fender bender, ATV collision, or person who fell through the ice while snowmobiling. If someone got hit on the traintracks in Maine, it would be in every newspaper and television broadcast around the state. But, in New York, it took a lot more to be newsworthy.