MORNING
RUSH HOUR
Alicia
O’Rourke checks her watch by the light of the street lamp as she leaves her
house.
6:10
—I’m
right on time. She is wearing a down coat; her short, brown hair (restored to
close to its original color at the beauty parlor) is ruffled by the frigid wind
coming from the west. She picks up Newsday
from the driveway, pulls her coat around her, fumbles for the key and starts the
Corolla, rust along the fender edges. She shivers until she gets to
Old
Country Road
when the heater
begins to work. The light changes and she crawls behind a truck spewing fumes—
her father’s cigars. She smiles, “They smelled awful but he was sweet,
singing old show tunes while I played the piano.” She tries to get out from
behind the truck but the traffic on the left won’t let her in. It is
6:23
.
As
she inches along her anxiety builds—pressure on her chest, her stomach
twisted. “Damn! Get moving—I can’t be late.” She pictures Elizabeth
Knolls, the head of nursing, tall and heavy-set with short blond hair and a
strong jaw, looking at her when she hired her, “We usually promote from
inside, and, frankly, I’m putting my neck out because I think you are very
dedicated and have real people skills. I’m counting on you to do every bit as
well as I think you can do—don’t let me down.” She’d left her office and
didn’t think her feet touched the ground. Imagine, I’m nursing supervisor in
orthopedics—a dream come true. She scowls at the clock on the dash board,
6:27
,
only 6 minutes to get to the train. The truck turns off, she takes a breath and
speeds ahead, turns onto South Broadway and then into the parking lot. Two
minutes to go. She is short and stocky and tries her best to jog across the
parking lot attempting to ignore the pain in her hip. When she starts up the
stairs, her chest hurts. “Breathing all that frigid air hurts my chest,” she
thinks. She stops on the landing and tries to calm down. The pain lets up but,
she hears the train coming into the station and she runs up the last flight of
stairs, damn hip hurts. “For god’s sake I’m only fifty-seven, I don’t
have time for a hip replacement.” The chest pain returns, the door opens and
she falls into the closest seat, panting, holding her chest until the pain
subsides. “Damn cold,” she mutters, “gets to me every time.”
She
pulls out Newsday from her briefcase,
scans the front page while checking the passing stations—Westbury,
Mineola
,
New Hyde Park— against her watch. She takes a breath, “Whew, it’s running
on time.” She looks out the window
watching cars lining up at grade crossings, white vapor rising from their
exhaust pipes. The train slows as it approaches
Jamaica
,
“Damn! Get going!” She looks at her watch as it crawls, late. A blind man
gets on with his dog; a woman offers him her seat; the man declines.
When the train finally pulls into Penn Station at 7:42, it is twenty
minutes late. “I should be okay assuming the subway comes right away.” She
hurries up the stairs from the platform and rests for a moment on the landing,
then walks quickly through the passageway toward the A train. She hums Duke
Ellington’s Take the A Train,
hearing Betty Roche singing “Hurry, hurry, hurry take the A train…” in her
head. The platform is empty meaning the train has just come and gone. She looks
at her watch,
7:51
.
Alarmed, she mumbles, “Oh God, no!” She shifts back and forth from foot to
foot thinking of Elizabeth Knolls, telling her you are doing a great job. “The
nurses respect you— I’m sure it wasn’t easy since they wanted one of their
own to take over. Tessa told me about that guy who had back surgery and was
verbally abusing the nurses. You had a talk with him to straighten him out and
you did it with good humor and a smile. You really were their hero. Great
going!! And by the way, since you live so far away, I was afraid you’d often
be late. I’m pleased to see that you’ve been early or on time. Keep it
up.” Alicia remembers how she walked out of the office on cloud nine then
called her nurses together, told them how great they were and brought in lunch
for them.
The
subway finally thunders in. She checks her watch:
7:53
“Oh my
God,” she mutters to the train, “come on, I’m late already.” She can’t
see an empty seat so she stands in front of a couple also in their 50s. They sit
holding hands, smiling. Every once in a while the woman leans over and says
something she can’t hear, the man laughs, squeezes her hand and at one point
picks it up and kisses it. Alicia feels slightly embarrassed as if she is
intruding on a private moment. She thinks of her husband, Larry, and wishes that
he would just hold her hand or even rub her back after a long day but they’ve
drifted apart and hardly talk any more let alone be lovey-dovey. “When Craig
goes to college next year,” she sighs, “we’ll probably split up.”
She
forces her attention back to her work, picturing the nurses under her smiling
when
Tracy
came into the nurses’ room singing a great imitation of The Dreamgirls. At
8:04
she feels panicky and when she finally gets to
168th
Street
, she stands at the
door like a horse at the starting gate. When it opens she bolts from the train
and ignoring the pain in her hip runs for the stairs. After a few steps her
heart is pounding and she has a pain in her chest; at the top of the stairs she
is out of breath and pauses for just a second thinking, “Oh am I out of shape.
If a few stairs make me out of breath, I’d better get to the gym.” Then she
urges herself on up. She stops again at the top of the stairs trying to gather
her strength for the last dash to her office.
The wind is coming off the river and howling right at her; it roars
between the buildings like it was in a wind tunnel. It takes her breath away.
She puts her head down, brings her scarf up to her nose and mouth and pushes
herself down the hill. The “Don’t Walk,” sign is blinking at Broadway and
she hustles across as fast as she can on a hip that hurts and legs that feel
like lead. She turns down Broadway and begins to feel a bit better as the
building blocks the wind, then enters the lobby and rushes for the elevators.
She looks at her watch,
8:12
, taps her foot as she
watches the elevator lights: they all seem stalled at the 4th, 6th
and 7th floors. She mumbles, “I have no time for this,” and runs
to the stair well. “I’m only on the third floor, it will be faster.” She
pictures
Elizabeth
giving her a disappointed look; she imagines the nurses wondering where she is.
After one flight of stairs her chest hurts; she hobbles on her bum hip. She
stops on the landing then urges herself on up to the second floor. She is
breathing heavily, the chest pain is worse. She looks at her watch— 8:15.
“To hell with the pain, I’ve got to get moving.” She starts toward the
third floor. Now the pain in her chest is stronger and moves into her arm and up
her neck. She winces and wonders if the coffee and cranberry muffin she’d had
for breakfast have given her indigestion. When
she reaches the landing she feels like a 300 pound Sumo wrestler is jumping on
her chest. She keeps telling herself, only another few feet, you are almost
there, she is sweating and can barely catch her breath; as Alicia pushes open
the door to the Third Floor, she sees an image of Elizabeth Knolls smiling at
her.
She
leans against the wall thinking, you made it, finally, and then, “Oh my God, I
bet I’m having a …” She is dizzy and feels herself falling. The last thing
she remembers is
Tracy
calling, “Are you…” then everything goes black.
