Dark Museum

Diya | September 25, 2020 | New York City, NY

"Ladies and gentlemen, we are delayed due to a sick passenger on this train and will be moving shortly. We apologize for any inconvenience."

It had already been a twenty-minute trip, which should have been five. Diya adjusted the tips of her fingers against the ceiling of the subway car. One of the people crammed against her adjusted his position too, but all it did was swirl the communal sweat. Even if she wanted to, Diya couldn't get away from him — any of them. When the train doors opened at the station, a little air movement on the platform seeped into the stifling car. Shimmying through the sardine can that was the F train would have required such determination, such a press of human bodies, that even escape was nearly impossible.

Three people sprinted on the platform to squeeze into the car and pant-laughed at their luck at having made the train. Then they waited another ten minutes stopped with the rest of them.

Eventually, someone tried pushing into the car and couldn't, so the platform filled until it too was packed, and people stood on the stairs waiting their turn to get down.

We're all dead if there's a panic, she thought.

She wished she could put her arm down. Touching the ceiling did nothing to keep her upright — her fellow commuters did that. Whenever the train started again, her soft contact on the car would do nothing to stop her surging with the rest of the passengers, crushed by everyone in front.

Believing there was a sick person on board wasn't a stretch. Diya herself might pass out or puke from the heat at any moment. Her freshly laundered business casual was ready for the wash again after an hour of wear. By the time she got to work, she would look as though she'd recently finished mowing a large lawn in ninety-degree summer heat: ribbons of sweaty hair pasted to her skin, rings under her armpits, swamp ass. Though the car was air-conditioned, the amassed body heat and strained system simply couldn't keep up.

It was surprising more people weren't sick. If someone had lost their breakfast, it'd be impossible to dodge the spray, which could very well set off a vomit chain reaction, a thought Diya tried hard to cram back into the dark recesses of her imagination.

The MTA for a fact didn't stop a train when someone puked. Whenever it happened, almost everyone on board the car would eject at the next station, but the conductor didn't give a fuck.

"We use 'sick passenger' as a code for when someone dies," her friend Angel, who worked for the MTA told her the last time they'd been out together. He was dolled up in drag because he liked being glam when he went drinking; Diya was slumming it in jean cutoffs and a sequin tank top, not trusting a full face of makeup in Satan's Armpit outside. When she finally arrived and found Angel vaping against the building, scrolling through his phone, she'd gone on an apologetic tirade blaming a sick passenger.

Friends were forgiving about lateness because any hesitation along the way, any train missed by a fraction of a second, any mystery stop between stations could turn a thirty-minute commute into an hour-long one.

Workplaces didn't extend the same courtesy.

Diya had recovered as best she could with Angel, recasting her annoyance as empathy for the possible dead person she was blaming. The conductors made that announcement every day.

"Are there really that many people dying on the subway?" she'd asked.

"Well, sometimes they just get hurt and the MTA has to investigate to find out what happened in case they get sued by the person. But yeah, most of the time it's death." He took another drag of his pen. "Or if you hear 'police incident' it usually means someone jumped. You ready?"