Short Story: A Tuesday Morning, a Passerby

A Tuesday Morning, a Passerby

She waits there, suspended in free fall. Everything is still. Her coffee hits the platform first, and she will soon follow. A Tuesday morning. She was at the train station, thinking about the places she needed to be. And in the swarm of people also thinking about the places they needed to be, she made a small misstep. She tripped. Now she will fall. She will miss the train. She will get back up, and she will take the next one. But she will be late. That’s how it usually goes. But where are you in all of this? Open your eyes. You are here, at the station, standing in the doorway of the train. Your eyes catch her as she is falling. You look at where you are standing. You don’t move. She is just out of reach. She hits the ground—a slap on the concrete. You wince. People watch her. Your first thought is: Your second thought is: should you help her? It would be easy enough to step off the train—to help her up. It’s allergy season, and you have some spare tissues in your pocket. It would be easy enough to clean the spilled coffee from her hands... But this is a train station, don’t you have places to be?

The doors shut before you have the chance to step off (or so you will tell yourself when you recall this later). (You will say you were going to help her, but your hesitation now says otherwise.) Don’t worry, someone else will help her. Does this make you a bad person? you ask yourself. No, you say. For you are just a person. Just a person with places to be. But so says everyone else on the train—they think the same as you! You are not bad people, you all agree, you are just people.

And so you, among the people, watch from the windows as she misses the train. At least you won’t be late. (You will never admit your first thought as you watched her, on that Tuesday morning, was that you were glad it wasn’t you lying on the platform as people passed by.)