By Mike Scalise | The New York Times
I was 26 and belly-flat on the platform of the uptown 6 train in New York. My messenger bag had flipped over my head. A constellation of trampled, blackened gum wads hovered inches from my face. My hands and feet: numb.
I hadn’t tripped. No one had pushed me. I’d been moving through the human flow of rush hour like everyone else, heading from my day job at an educational publisher to my night job writing copy for a marketing firm. I’d been double-jobbing it for a year while my wife was in graduate school, balancing two sets of deadlines and workloads, coming home close to midnight for most of each week.
As strangers helped me to a nearby bench, then pointed out the line of blood running from my elbow, I knew what had happened. I’d been warned.
