A Sick Passenger

Yesterday it is 3:30pm and I have to go to a very important appointment/meeting in midtown at 4. I know everyone in New York thinks what they are doing is always incredibly important but this really was, I swear. It is the kind of thing you absolutely cannot be late to. I hop on the E train to take up to 34th street. First let’s start off saying just how much I hate the E train. Well I guess hate is a strong word, one that is much more appropriate for later in the story. Okay, so I strongly dislike the E train. I always have to transfer to the E anytime I want to get over the west side from my apartment. Not only do you have to go up and back down a million stairs to transfer (which always makes me grumpy) but the E is always late and always smells like pee.


Everything is going smoothly until somewhere in the tunnel no mans land between the 23rd and 34th street stations the subway slows to a halt. I glance at my watch 3:45- great. But the subway stopping briefly for mysterious reasons happens almost every day and since these delays are only a minute or two, I don’t really think much of it.


After about five minutes though I start to wonder what is going on and begin to get a little anxious. I only have 10 minutes now to get off the subway and to my destination. I begin to feel flush and jittery. It is when the conductor completely shuts down the motor of the train that I realize this is not good.


We sit there as the minutes creep by. I keep looking at my watch then my Blackberry, watch then Blackberry, hoping that time would stop moving or that the train would start to. I keep waiting to hear an announcement from the conductor explaining the problem but all that comes out from above is static because the loudspeaker is broken (of course crappy E train). As the time inches past 4 o’clock I really start to panic, my suit pants clinging to my legs with sweat because the air conditioning has been shut off. I feel the tears sting in the back of my eyes (yes I am sometimes a crier). I along with about the other 50 people in the car just sit and wait. The lights even go out for a time, and we are all in the silent darkness together. Surprisingly I am not worried about this fact- the tunnels could be erupting around us and I wouldn’t care because I am too upset about where I was supposed to be ten minutes ago at 4 o’clock. I can’t believe of the hundreds of times I have ridden the subway this is the day that this fiasco happens. THIS DAY. I am never late to anything, anything at all, especially important things and here I am trapped, trapped underground with no cell phone signal and no information on when the end of this awfulness was in sight.


Normally I respond to daily inconveniences on the subway calmly and well. I consider it the price we have to pay for not ever having to worry about rising gas prices. But I have never experienced anything like this. I am now in a complete irrational frenzy about my appointment, muttering expletives to myself and rocking back and forth.


Finally after over 40 minutes the train’s loudspeaker has mysteriously found its voice. We are delayed due to a “sick passenger ahead.” I have heard about this ambiguous announcement before. It usually means (so I’ve been told) that either someone has collapsed in one of the cars or someone has been hit by the train.


I feel enraged. Angry at the conductor, the MTA, the city itself. I know it is not the MTA’s fault if someone is pancaked all over the tracks. But someone tell me why today? If the MTA was one tangible object, a person or perhaps a creature I would slay it right now without thinking twice.


Apparently the very front car in the train is close enough to the 34th street platform and we are instructed to all walk through all the cars up to the front. Ironically I think to my blog entry Tuesday about people who walk between cars. It is a weird experience. You never realize just how long a subway train is until you are stranded in the last car and have to walk through all of them with several hundred other people.



I know what you are thinking. Someone has either had a massive heart attack on the way to Penn Station or committed suicide by leaping in front of the train. How could I be so upset about my stupid appointment? Well it is obvious I am not in a rational state of mind as this all plays out.


I could’ve used this time to take some good observations of this event- how my fellow passengers were responding to this mess, what it looks like in the darkness deep inside of the tunnel when you are outside the car. However I am too consumed by my own panic about the fact that is now almost 4:30 to really notice anything.

By the time I finally get through and escape onto the platform and I am like a crazed animal.