In an effort to kickstart my lacking physical fitness, I’ve started taking the stairs out of home my home subway station.
You should know that the 181st A train is situated about 14 miles* below the surface of Washington Heights, so we not talking about one or two short flights up and out. (*it maybe a little less than 14 miles… but it may or may not be reasonably close to the center of the earth, five or take).
As I started up the stairs the other evening, I could see about halfway up an MTA worker was standing on one of the landings and woman one landing up from him, looking back in interest. The worker was holding some industrial-sized tongs, and a bag. The tongs looked large enough to extract a festering rodent from such a stairwell, and from the looks on his and the onlooking lady’s face- that’s what I assumed we dealing with. But I couldn’t see the floor of the landing from where I was.
I should mention that the stairway is divided by metal bars, railings, interconnected from top to bottom in a way that to switch between sides of the stairway after committing to one side is not something easily done or recommended. I’m not one to risk bodily harm, or extreme subway schmutz on my clothes (or both) to test my prowess on such a feat. I mention this because the lady watching the scene play out was on the other side of the stairwell, while the worker eyeing the whatever-it-is was in mine.
(You might think you know where this going- but I just said I wouldn’t try to climb over the railings, and I’m sticking to it. Even if meant some rat innards may soon be sticking to my shoe. So this not that story.)
As I near the landing in question, the lady’s attention remains as wrapt as the worker’s reticence to perform his duty. A few more steps, and just before the landing comes in to view I ready myself for carnage, maybe a rotten smell, or perhaps just a rat on its back, frozen in time and rigor mortis. Maybe it’s some human feces, that’d be tong-worthy, although i think I’d have smelled that one a few landings ago. Or perhaps just food mess of some kind- he would’t to pick that up with his hands- but would that have cause the woman to remain above and gawk? Well imagine my surprise, my relief when as I reach the landing what the worker is reaching for with his tongs is a discarded, seemingly used syringe and hypodermic needle. That’s not something you see every day- anymore anyway.
There was time when needles were commonplace in subways stations. That recent, but bygone era when you couldn’t walk down the street without bumping into some smack-riddled addict stumbling down the street. Now, I’m sure this wasn’t that at all. No, just a diabetic who, having overdid walking up the stairs, needed a shot of insulin to themselves the rest of the way up, and then in the process of put the needle in their portable sharps container carelessly missed and dropped it in the stairwell. That’s the story I myself, and the only thing I pick up is my pace to head up the rest of the stairs and into the night air.