25 August 2017
Google Maps says it will take me 30
minutes to get to my destination, so I’m giving myself an hour. New Yorkers are incessantly complaining about
the subway, but it’s because you truly cannot count on your train to be there
for you when you need it. I have another
“working interview” today, but I’m positive it is just another temp assignment
my shady recruiter is sending me on as a way to make more money off me. But at least my sickness is finally starting
to subside.
Yesterday morning as I sat on the train,
(I’m often fortunate enough to get a seat on my long journeys from Brooklyn) an
incredibly large, muscular, 30-something man sat down beside me. His arm brushed mine and I realized how
desperate I was for human contact. I
have yet to go dancing! Before he sat
down, I must have looked like a zombie.
I haven’t had a good night’s sleep in so many weeks, so tired, so
stressed, so sick. I wanted to lay my
head on his gargantuan shoulder, close my eyes and go to sleep. I realized,
sitting next to him, how much I needed human interaction. I needed someone to
ask me how I’m doing. I needed someone
to hug me and tell me everything was going to be OK. I needed to dance! I was consumed by all of these thoughts when,
all of a sudden, he got up and walked over to the other side of the train and
sat down across from me. Could he smell
my desperation? Was it billowing off of
me like a dark cloud and he was afraid to breathe it in? People are looking at me now! They’re all wondering, just as I am, what I did
to offend him. I clenched my teeth not
knowing what to do. So I just sat up
straighter and reminded myself that I don’t care. He’s probably a terrible dancer anyhow.
It was on the way home yesterday
that I realized how much better I was starting to feel. That’s the way it is when you get sick. You don’t get better overnight, but one day
you realize that most of the suck is gone.
I’m taking the train back to Brooklyn when I come to this
realization. It was as if I became too
cocky about my improving health. I
thought to myself, “Wow, I feel as if I could take on the world right
now…except for this – uh, oh - this cough.”
Coughing on the subway is the equivalent of being a leper. Last week, the girl next to me could have won
an Oscar for her courageous display of disgust at my illness. The trains at rush hour are like putting 10 lbs.
of poop in a 5lb bag. I was, of course,
lucky enough to get a seat. But this
just means that instead of you sticking your butt in someone’s face, someone
else is sticking his or her butt in your face.
Arms up – sweatboxes radiating. People
on all sides surround me and I feel that evil tickle way down in my lungs. I’m at the point in my sickness where my
lungs hurt less because all the mucus is finally breaking up. This is the point where your cough is
considered “productive.” Gotta love the
terminology. I make the decision to hold
the cough in as long as possible. I made
it through my interviews last week, cheeks clenched; I can make it through the
remainder of this train ride without a volcanic eruption. What happened next, however, was out of my
control. The cough could no longer be
contained. It was coming to a head
whether or not I was on board. Being the
proud healthcare professional that I am, I used proper etiquette and coughed
into my elbow instead of my hand. It was
loud. It was disgusting. It sounded as if something was alive in my
chest and trying to escape. I received
the dreaded looks from ALL the nearby fellow passengers when I start to bring
my arm down from my mouth. As I do this,
a long, thick strand of phlegm had shot out from my lungs and stuck to the
inside of my arm. The other end still
attached to my mouth, creating a Myrtle Beach saltwater taffy-like experience
for all the onlookers as my arm lowered and stretched the phlegm until it
broke. That’s what I get for privately
boasting to myself about the improvement of my health. What do I do?
The thick, yellow, sticky mess is just sitting in the crease of my
arm. Everyone else is asking themselves
as well, “What will she do?” What COULD
I do? I simply assumed a deadpan stare
and pretended like I wasn’t there. When
I got to my stop, I wiped it on my clothes like a proper 4-year old. But for the remainder of the subway ride, which
felt like 525,600 minutes, I was catatonic.
Anyhow, I’m feeling much better
now! Despite giving myself TWICE as much
time as Google says I needed this morning, I was still 15 minutes late for my
temp assignment. Me? I’m never late. It took me an hour and 15 minutes to travel 6
miles. This is the first time meeting
these people and I’m terribly upset that this is their first impression of me,
regardless of whether or not they have an available assistant position. The Dr. comes out and says very loudly, “What
kind of soldier are you?? 0800 means 0800!!”
Whew. This means A) he looked at
my resume, and B) he has a sense of humor.
It couldn’t have come at a better time.
The assistant that helped me today
was from Brazil and her name is Ana. She
was about 8 feet tall, spoke around 22 languages, and was quite possibly one of
the funniest people I’ve ever met. It
came up in conversation that I liked Scotch, so at the end of the day after we
closed up shop, she got the other Dr. to bust out his bottle of Glenlivet. Needless to say, having skipped lunch, my
train ride back today was incredibly pleasant, as I felt EVEN BETTER than
yesterday. And with zero mucus
eruptions. I walked out of my way before
getting on the subway this time so that I could spend time walking and talking
with Ana. She tried her best to convince
me that I could just work part-time at their office (they didn’t have a full
time position), and supplement my income by bartending at a strip club. She was talking a lot with her thick accent
and I was laughing, all the while looking up.
At one point, she stopped and asked, “Have you ever been in Times Square
before?” “Er, yeah, uh, of course!” But had I been in THAT part of Times Square
before? There was so much going on. So much happening. So much looking up to do. New Yorkers really do get jaded after a
while. I think it is refreshing for them
to have someone remind them of the wonders that surround them.
We got to the subway and said our
goodbyes. We promised to go dancing and
that I would come to her house for a BBQ and bring all my own food. We hugged and I realized that today was the
best day I’ve had in NY so far, and not just because I may or may not have been
a teensy bit drunk. Human interaction. I’m on the up and up.
Don’t look up,
Courtney
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