Five(32)

“Fuck a duck!” she cries, clinging to the banister, her torso horizontal, trying to regain her footing. At the bottom of the stairs, Bad Back turns his head. He got tired of pacing, so although no one was watching him, at 7:05 and five seconds, while To Do List was dithering, he made a big show of taking a seat on the stairs by grabbing the banister stiffly and swinging himself around to sit. But at the sound of her exclamations above the alarm, he turns and catches an unfortunate glimpse of To Do List’s undercarriage, encased in its nylon tormentor as she barrels toward him, dangerously close to revealing the secrets of her middle-aged femininity beneath her work skirt.

But undeterred by the exposure of her distressed gusset to the public, or at least to this nondescript commuter lump, she orders, “That man is on the tracks! Go!” like a fallen general giving his final command.

Bad Back, however, does not move. Oh no, he thinks. How will he pull this off.

As To Do List and Bad Back waffle ineffectually, Sonny calls, “Eh man…hey!” to Medical Student, touching his arm across Mrs. Worth, trying to get his attention over the blare of the alarm. “Are you okay?”

Medical Student nods. Mrs. Worth, no longer able to hide it, suddenly cries above the siren, “My arm!” and clutches her left arm, letting out a guttural groan of pain.

“Shit, what do we do?” Sonny loudly asks Medical Student. “Do we call an ambulance? Does this alarm trigger the cops?” He looks up at the clock on the display board. 7:06. Delayed. That word. Why, Sonny thinks.

Medical Student nods, frozen in a different kind of pain, squeezes his eyes shut, squeezes Mrs. Worth’s hand at the same time, and wills himself out of the war, away from the living memory of air raid sirens, into the present.

“My arm!” Mrs. Worth cries out again and starts to pant. Medical Student’s eyes open wide. Over the old woman’s shoulder, he sees his friend Pascal, clutching his bloody arm before he falls to the ground and disappears. He could not help then. He must help now. “Yes, madam,” he says. “We are here, I know it hurts.”

“Go!” To Do List shouts over the siren at Bad Back, as she begins to indelicately bum-shuffle down the steps.

I can do this, Bad Back thinks. He gets up gingerly, leaning heavily on the banister, puts his hand to the small of his back, and awkwardly jogs to the edge of the platform but adds a limp, hoping to retain authenticity.

He looks over the edge of the platform and sees Liam, unconscious. All the blood rushes to his face. God, Bad Back thinks, I’m such a plonker.

“Man on the tracks!” he calls out over his shoulder and begins waving his arms to get the attention of Medical Student and Sonny. “Man on the tracks!” he yells again.

“Man on the tracks!” To Do List echoes him from the bottom of the steps.

Sonny looks at Medical Student. “Go,” Medical Student says, coming back into himself. “I am calling the paramedics. I’ve got her.” He holds Mrs. Worth as Sonny runs to the platform edge at 7:06 and thirty-six seconds.

“Oh shit!” he exclaims, when he looks over the edge and sees Liam lying in the crawl space under the concrete lip.

Without a moment’s hesitation, Sonny jumps down onto the tracks and jogs toward him.

This is it, Sonny thinks. Not long now. “Man on the tracks!” he repeats.

He is not sure if he is imagining a rumble under his feet. But the headlights of the train in the distance look real. They’re faint and far away but not too far. And not far enough.

“Man on the tracks!” Sonny shouts again to anyone and everyone and no one as he jogs toward Liam. He’s not sure what to do, or what he wants to do, or how to do it, or if he should.

He thinks many things all at once:

    This man could die.

I could save this man.

I could die.

I could save us both.

We could both die.

Together.



“Hey, wake up!” calls Sonny. Liam doesn’t understand the loud voice though he can hear it. He feels the slightest scratch of a tiny paw on his ear. In twelve seconds, when he opens his eyes, he will see the train.

“C’mon, mate, wake up!” Sonny shouts again. He will see it too.





Sonny


“Good morning, little baby-man,” she says to gurgling baby Sonny at 4 a.m. He is busy in his crib, not crying but swinging his arms and legs up and down and round and round. He tilts to one side repeatedly, the start of rolling. He is too young for all of this motion, she thinks, but he is probably going to be an Olympic athlete. Her son is advanced. Special, obviously.

“Put him in the swaddle,” her tired husband slurs from his side of the bed. “Maybe he’ll go back to sleep.”

“Hello, my baby,” she says quietly, as he squirms and kicks. She gets the designer swaddle with the pocket for his legs and the Velcro fasteners to keep his arms in place. They’ve read that swaddling is meant to calm young babies, to help them sleep better by mimicking the cocooned feeling of the womb.

He is so sweet, wrapped up this way, arms pinned to his sides under the cloth, still for a few moments, just his little head visible at the top, with his big eyes looking at her in wonder, a shaft of early morning light creeping through the side of the blind.

“Back to sleep now, baby,” she says. And just as she turns her back to return to her bed next to his crib, she sees her son raise one tiny fist, very slowly, in the air.