About a month ago I pulled a homeless man out of the tracks of a metro train after he had passed out, face down in the tunnel. I didn’t want to write about it for a long time simply because it seemed self indulgent and unnecessary and oddly traumatizing. After all, I don’t know this man’s name nor does he know mine and I was certainly not the only person to carry him out of the tunnel. Yet, I decided to write about it because it marked a turning point for myself, a moment of immense emotion and understanding. I’m not striving to be profound nor lesson bearing but if it hadn’t been for the man in a fine three piece suit, Burberry scarf and patent leather wing tip shoes I may never have gotten down into that tunnel, I may never have pulled a man out.
I like to think that I am a strong person, one willing to put myself in danger to help others less fortunate and I believe that most people I surround myself with would say the same of themselves. However, never before had I been so confronted by the true face of reality and the stark difference between what you believe yourself capable of and what you actually are.
I was coming back from a friend’s house at around 1 am and had been waiting for a minute or two to transfer trains when I heard yells from the end of the station. I turned towards the sound and saw, on the opposite side of the gap, a man yelling at a body lying face down across the tracks on my side of the station. I immediately ran to the end of the tracks and looked down at an enormous man bleeding profusely from his nose and mouth, arms outstretched across two metal tracks. I was the first one who could have done something but was the second to actually do it.
I’m not sure why I just stared. The clock above my head gave me 6 minutes until the next train was to arrive yet I let valuable seconds tick away. I believe in those 5 seconds my mind said more to me than it has in the last 15 years. I didn’t have the answer and for a few seconds I was afraid that I wouldn’t find it. But somewhere in those 5 to 10 seconds a man dressed to near perfection arrived, took my arm and got me down into the tracks. I like to think I would have been able to solve the problem on my own but I can’t be sure. I do know however that he was confident in what he was doing and very sure that I would be the one to do it with him.
We hoisted him up by his arms and legs, slowly walked to the emergency stairs carefully avoiding the charged tracks and placed the bleeding man on the platform. The tunnel was dirty, full of oil and rats but I knew that this poor man had been on his way back home, trying to make his way to a warm place deep in the twists and turns of the cavernous subway to sleep away the night. Once he was back on the platform I had a moment to step away and breathe. Such a simple situation with such an obvious solution had caused me so much stress and emotion that I never could have foreseen experiencing. Stooped over the bleeding man was his savior, three piece suit now soiled and ripped on the shoulder, trying to wake him up as the paramedics arrived. It was the contrast that hit me and the understanding that this seemingly stodgy Parisian understood the gravity of the situation better than I and no $1000 suit was going to get in the way.
I don’t really blame myself for hesitating, I like to think that most people would have paused to think things through. Yet, I believe that I had thought myself to be the one acting immediately, not the one needing to be asked to help. I was a little distraught that while I had gawked someone else had acted so decisively and without hesitation. Maybe at one point the man in the three piece suit had stopped and stared too, maybe next time I will be the one in the wing tip shoes.
The man in the three piece suit and I were on the next train, heading back to whatever upper-class apartment we were currently living in. We didn’t make eye contact for the next three stops but at the fourth the doors opened, he stepped out, turned around and gave me a nod. The bleeding man had been left on the platform with the paramedics, I had retrieved my backpack, the suit had found his umbrella and we had all continued on.
