Sicko

If you ride the subway in New York City, you're probably familiar with the phenomenon of the sick passenger. "Ladies and gentlemen, due to a sick passenger downtown, your train will not be arriving for a fuckillion and a half years." "Ladies and gentlemen, this train will not be moving because of a sick passenger, please exit to the platform." And, of course, those advisories put up in subway cars by the MTA that ominously ask: "What if you are the sick passenger?"

Indeed, what if you are the sick passenger? This morning I boarded a Manhattan-bound E train at around 7:15 am on my way to an interview in the Bronx. It is a long, long journey from Queens to the Bronx by subway, including possibly the World's Worst Transfer through the infamous tunnel of doom at 42nd Street. Approximately one minute into my journey, a terrible sense of foreboding washed over me. I was about to faint, or vomit, or possibly both, in the middle of the crowded express train during rush hour. I was about to become the Sick Passenger.

Abruptly I knelt down in the middle of the car, interview suit and all. I put my head down. I put my hand over my mouth. A woman above me started fanning me with a rolled-up copy of the Metro and asked the people around us if they would give up their seats. (A testimony to the value of a seat on the subway during rush hour: No one budged.) I held onto the pole and weakly protested that I would just get off at the next stop. The train crawled. The woman fanned. The air stagnated. I thought about how much it sucked to have gotten up early on this 95-degree day before my birthday to put on a suit (complete with pantyhose, no less) to go to the Bronx to interview for a job I didn't really want and then not even make it there. The train slowed to an agonizing, stuffy, funereal pace. I almost, almost threw up all over my suit.

It is amazing what the body can accomplish by sheer force of will: I pictured myself losing consciousness on the filthy subway floor, with the woman above me frantically fanning my lifeless body with that damn copy of Metro while bored teenagers on iPods and stressed businessmen spitefully glared at me for further slowing their commute, and slowly the dizziness and nausea eased. I stood back up. I concentrated purposefully on a pair of pink shoes in front of me. The train finally arrived at Roosevelt, four hundred years after it had left the stop where I got on. A seat opened up and I sank into it. Eventually I made it to the Bronx. I arrived at the school and was about to head inside when I realized that...it was the wrong school. I suffered several small heart attacks: Had I mixed up my addresses? Could there be two schools in one building? I checked in with a crossing guard about the school I was looking for. "That's not around here," he said. "Far from it." I decided maybe I should just lay down and die right there in the street.

Then I noticed another school down the block. I was in the right place.

Every New Yorker knows that subway commutes can range from tolerable to hellish. But there's nothing quite like barely escaping the stigma of becoming the sick passenger.