iding
city subways isn’t the most predictable of pastimes, and not only
because the doors don’t always open at stations or the E suddenly
gets rerouted to the J line between two and three in the morning on odd-numbered
Saturdays. When you have to work the trains, throw out expectations altogether.
Imagine, for example, that you’re working in Transit at 191st Street, one of those upper Manhattan stations on the 1-9 line that was built a few feet above the magma at the earth’s core. You get a call someone has fallen on the tracks and, worse, may have come into contact with the third rail. You take the elevator down to the subway level and as soon as the doors open, you smell burning flesh. While your partner runs off to kill the power, you take in a somewhat shabbily dressed middle-aged man sprawled across the downtown tracks. His legs are across the running rails, but, sure enough, there is far too much of his upper body cushioned against the third rail. The tendrils of smoke rising from his arm disperse any last mystery about that burning smell.
And then the surprises really start.
A pregnant woman has been screaming nonstop on the uptown platform since you arrived on the scene. It is, in fact, in good part because of her horror before the man’s predicament that you were alerted in the first place. But now she has seen a little bit too much, her water breaks, and she is down on a bench as much in need of the EMS for the next generation as the original victim needs it for staying out of the next world. But hold the phone. Your partner has managed to shut off the power, the man on the tracks stops crackling and hissing, and you’re able to jump down from the platform to help him. But, whoops, hold on again. He doesn’t want to be helped. Up on his feet before you get to him, he’s already apologizing for causing so much trouble and declaring his intention of going home. The one small particular you can’t ignore as blithely as he does is an arm that has lost all its skin to the bone. Finally and very reluctantly, he accepts help up to the platform to await the ambulance. How could he have even survived such a third rail juicing? Well, what you add to your relentlessly growing knowledge about the city subway system that morning is that he actually saved himself with his legs over the running rails, which served as a bizarre grounding for the charges driving through the upper part of his body.
