Trainwreck

Chapter 1

It was one of those days in the middle of the week that deceptively felt like a Sunday. Hanni looked up from the book she'd been staring at for the better part of a half hour (without really making any progress) and took in the other occupants of her train's compartment.

Staring at the tired faces, waxen under the unforgiving neon lights of the train's interior, she had the impression her sentiment was shared by most, if not all of the other passengers.

Perhaps it was due to the fact she'd caught the last evening train and to the lateness of the hour, but as she watched the industrial area outside of San Francisco give way to rolling hills dimmed to prone, shadowy giants by the fading light, she wished her mind wasn't deceiving her.

Today had just been the latest in a series of grueling ones back at the hospital, where she had stopped several times between a patient and the next, and thought that the whole Bay Area had decided to come down with something as a twisted celebration of the winter solstice.

Not for the first time the thought that she ought to find a different apartment crossed her mind, but she couldn't really afford the inner city's prices on an intern's stipend. Not without subjecting herself to a series of annoying roommates, who would undoubtedly think they were meant to be the next Steve Jobs or something. She knew the thought to be unfair and somewhat bitter, but she was too exhausted to give it more than cursory regret.

All of her friends were back in New York, and she'd moved here too recently - accepting what her mother had called "a once in a lifetime" opportunity - to make any new ones.

So she sat alone on trains a lot, which had been good for mowing down her to-read list, and yet tonight she just couldn't make sense of the words that seemingly glared back from the page the more she stared. Her eyes hurt with the familiar pressure of a migraine building behind them, and there was a fastidious itch underneath her skin. All in all the train was too warm and stuffy for comfort, and while usually tiredness would make her cold enough to keep her jacket on, this trip she'd discarded all of her outermost layers, piling them on the empty seat next to her.

With a defeated sigh she marked her spot in the book and closed it, placing it back inside the backpack at her feet. As she sat back she met the gaze of the man who'd been sitting in front of her for the whole trip. He'd barely looked up from his copy of Sports Illustrated when she'd sat down after boarding the train, but now he stared back with an intensity that had Hanni squirming in her seat.

Looking around, she noticed that the compartment had mostly emptied and that only a scattering of people too caught up in their own thoughts remained, several rows away from hers. She found herself inexplicably pervaded by the kind of sudden fear that makes your heart thump painfully and your ears ring with bells of warning. Hanni couldn't tell if her heart swelled or her ribcage grew too small, but between one breath and the next she felt her body cramped as if someone had stuffed her inside the confines of a shoebox.

The man was leaning her way slightly now, his eyes still glued to her face, nose wrinkled as if he was smelling something he couldn't quite understand.

"Are you alright, miss?" His voice had a dreamlike lilt to it, or perhaps it was the fear dampening her hearing, but it sounded to Hanni like he was talking underwater.

"I'm fine." She blinked and pushed her chin out on the defensive, even though she was inwardly ashamed of the clipped tone she'd used. After all, the man had only asked a question, and what she had interpreted as fixation was probably concern.

She was too used to the detached way New Yorkers had of minding their own business, the easy going manner people had shown so far in her new city, jarring and uncomfortable at times.