The girl’s hair a wild swathe of brilliant lime as she pitched forward, lifted off her feet by the force of the man’s arm, her muscular body colliding with his at the edge of the platform, both of them hitting the ground.
The situation at the edge was a blur of colour and light, and Alex was still running and someone beside him running, when he lost his footing, and staggered for a moment, and a heavy man pushed past him and knocked him backwards and he felt the impact of metal on his skull, reached out for a wall, there was suddenly a wall in front of him, but it banked at an angle and then sped towards him, and the tiles struck him in the face as he fell.
Bodies in Time
I
Somewhere, people are talking.
An alarm goes off for an indefinite period of time. Somewhere there is the gentle continuous action of gravity, and the hard push of tile on the body’s weight.
‘He’s got a medic-alert bracelet,’ said a man’s voice.
After what seemed like some time, Alex realized that the man must be talking about him, that there was a hand on his wrist and another on his forehead. He should really open his eyes.
‘It says he’s diabetic. Do you think it could be insulin shock?’
Alex cleared his throat and looked up, an unfamiliar face leaning in towards him anxiously. ‘It’s not,’ he said. ‘Not insulin shock.’ He lifted a hand and wiped his eyes, and he could see that the girl was sitting on the platform, quite near him. If he had blacked out at all, it could only have been a matter of seconds. ‘I think I just, ah, just sort of lost it. I’m all right.’
‘He hit his head,’ said a woman’s voice. ‘On the pillar there. He could have a concussion.’
‘Should we call an ambulance?’
The girl was holding her forehead, dazed, and the boy with the goatee had pushed his way towards her now. Another group had formed around the man in the Rasta cap, who was waving them away, laughing, his hands trembling. The train was sitting still, frozen halfway into the station, the conductor leaning out the window.
The transit guard took a step towards the girl, his face stern, but a shiver of energy suddenly went through the people around her. Alex heard someone shouting, Ain’t you scared her enough for one day, man? The guard tried to speak, but he was cut off by someone else. Leave her alone. Jesus Christ.
And Alex saw what was happening now. It could have gone in any direction, she could have been their enemy, their terrorist threat. But the crowd, that strange volatile creature, had decided on protection, a soft animal embrace. For no reason, for this moment only, it had adopted the girl, the two fallen men; they were its wounded young.
He felt a man’s arm behind him, supporting him as he sat up. A curly-haired woman was at his shoulder. ‘I do think we should get you an ambulance.’
‘No, honestly. I’m fine now.’
‘At least a cup of tea.’
‘I have a glucometer in my bag. I need to check my blood sugar. But I really think I’m okay.’
Someone pulled the bag over to him and began lifting items out, a light meter and several lenses, before finally locating the insulin kit.
‘Can I help?’ asked the woman.
‘Thank you. But not really.’ They had found a thermos of tea, somehow, somewhere, and were carrying the plastic cup to each of the casualties in turn, the girl, the man in the cap, and then Alex. He sipped the tea, a man holding the cup to his lips; it was hot and sweet, and he was aware of an extraordinary feeling of comfort, which confused him, because he hated being looked after, he had hated it all his life.
The man with the Rasta cap was the first to stand, exchanging handshakes with some of the people around him and heading towards the stairway for the east-west line. The train had pulled fully into the station now, and people were coming off, a bit bewildered, moving in a slow arc around Alex and the girl and those who were still surrounding them, checking them for injuries, offering them mobile phones to call home, one elderly woman pulling a thick brown herbal remedy out of her purse. Eucalyptus, thought Alex, eucalyptus and something else, the smell dark and weedy and medicinal, weirdly pleasant. It was not clear if he was supposed to drink it or rub it on his skin; he settled for inhaling deeply above the bottle, and this seemed to be satisfactory.
The boy had found the felt marker – the girl must have dropped it at some point in her dash down the platform – and he handed it over to the security guard, eyes lowered, then sat by the girl and muttered, Fucking fascist’s mad at the world because he couldn’t even be a proper cop.
Somehow Alex, on his feet now, was being led past a line of transit staff and up to the street, still accompanied, wrapped in the foolish kind concern of the crowd, and he hated this sort of thing, he really did, but this was so purely impersonal, so nearly abstract, as they hailed a taxi for him and helped him into the back, that he could almost accept it as a kind of joy.
You could stand on the upper level of the subway and look at the letters FE scrawled on the tile poster glass, and not have any idea what had gone on below. You would assume that it was someone’s initials, probably.
Above, in the shopping mall, exchanges of goods and currency continued unbroken, the inhabitants of the city purchasing candied pineapple and disposable razors and stocks and bonds and geranium-scented shower gels. A woman at a corner of the street hummed under her breath, sipping from a small paper cup of espresso. A driver climbed down from his streetcar to switch the tracks. White birds fell from the cold air towards the rooftops, and men and women crossed at the flashing lights, their selves a silent accidental balance, norepinephrine and serotonin, infinite tiny adjustments. These are the actions of the world, the small repetitions by which it runs.
And there is always this respite in the morning, misplaced and temporary, but a breathing space at least. Alex sat back in the taxi’s soft seat, conveyed without effort towards his destination.
The cloud cover had thickened while he was underground; the streets had gone shadowed and dim, as if the sun had barely risen, and the sky was a low churn of black and dark slate grey, the under-sides of the cloud drifts edged with brilliance. The taxi pulled into the parking lot of the hospital.
People were crossing the tiles of the lobby, the lights fully on now, a wide fluorescent space. Near the information desk, a woman with thick hair like yarn was sitting on a bench, turning her hands in her lap. She stared at Alex as he passed.
‘There’s going to be a wind,’ she said loudly. ‘There’s going to be a great wind tomorrow.’
‘Yes,’ said Alex. ‘You’re probably right.’
She turned away from him then, and he walked on into the hallway.
He went to the pharmacy on the ground floor, handed over his prescription slip and got back a plastic bottle of antibiotics, then took the elevator up to his office.
The Rifampin was chalky and foul-tasting, and Alex drank some fruit juice and ate a stale muffin that had been sitting in his desk drawer, then called Fiona to find out if he was working or not. No, she said, he had taken two sick days for the laser surgery, and what was he doing in his office at all?
‘I’ve been having trouble keeping track,’ he said.
Susie wasn’t in the ICU waiting room, but her gloves were sitting on the table, beside an unopened bottle of Rifampin. He waited in the doorway until he saw her coming, walking slowly down the corridor from the ward, each footstep deliberate as if she were balanced on a string. She was still wearing her coat, though the rooms were warm; her hair matted on one side, her face blotchy and raw. She pushed through the double glass doors, but she didn’t notice him right away – she went to the vending machine outside the waiting room and pushed the buttons with delicate disoriented precision, knelt down to remove a chocolate bar.