Last Saturday, after a day spent with family, the Bus Fam found ourselves on a late-night 4 ride. I was exhausted and anxious to get the kids home ASAP, so I was grateful that the handful of other passengers on the bus were quietly minding their business.
At 17th, the driver stopped, rather abruptly, several feet beyond the bus stop sign. Through the window, I saw an older woman, somewhere between 55 and 70, hurrying from the area where she had been waiting to the front door of the bus. On the way, she paused and bent to pick up something from the ground.
When the woman finally boarded, she glared at the driver and said, “You knocked my phone out of my hand.”
This was a curious statement. It’s possible that she didn’t have a tight grip on the phone, and the air current from the bus caused her to drop it. But certainly, it is unlikely that the driver had done anything to cause this woman to drop her phone.
I assumed that he would either ignore her accusation or apologize and keep it moving. Instead, he responded, immediately and aggressively.
“No, I didn’t!”
“Yes,” she said, louder this time, “you did.”
The driver pulled away from the stop.
“No, I didn’t.”
“Yes, you did.”
They went back and forth like this, voices escalating, while the woman held tightly to the pole diagonal to the driver’s seat, and the bus careened down Jefferson.
At 18th, the driver stopped at a red light.
“You need to sit down!” he shouted. “You’re crazy! SIT DOWN.”
By this time, it was clear that the woman was struggling to maintain her balance. Her back was hunched significantly, either from pain or a more permanent condition.
“You need to sit down,” he repeated.
She responded, quietly this time, “Now that you stopped, I can.”
The woman turned, with effort, and sat down in the reserved section. Then, she began making the kinds of sounds someone makes when they are in pain: whimpers, moans, yelps, gasps.
I noticed that she held a bunched up hospital gown in her lap. I remembered that she had boarded in front of Swedish. And I wondered.
I wondered what it must feel like to be released from the hospital after 10 p.m. on Saturday night. To be expected to make it to the bus stop under your own power. To have no one to wheel you or hold your arm or wait with you or just be happy that you’re out. To be suffering mightily, maybe because the painkillers they gave you (if they gave you any) are wearing off. To be barely holding it together while you wait for the bus in the dark, and then to have that bus pass you as you stand there—alone—at the stop. To drop your phone as you hurry to catch it, terrified that it will pass the stop altogether. To exacerbate your already excruciating pain as you bend to find that phone in the dark, knowing that the next bus won’t come for (at least) 20 minutes. To have the driver who passed you dismiss your righteous anger, dismiss you with his eyes and the tone of his voice and with that word—crazy—on this already humiliating night.
It hurts to talk, but you won’t be silent.
You won’t be silenced.
