Today I was heading home from a class that I'm auditing at Ryerson, it had been a pretty good day thus far: I was wearing my ratty jeans and plaid t-shirt with my Kenneth Cole shoes and I was amused by the contrast between outfit and footwear (my cute patent leather pair, but not "shiny shiny" just shiny). I also had my "dirty harry" bag, which I rarely use but like to pull out when I feel it's a day for accessories... Ok I'm rambling.
I was walking down the stairs into the subway at Yonge/Dundas Square and then I turned into the station and there was a man lying face down on the floor of the station. At first I didn't know what to think, to be honest I just wanted to move through as fast as possible. Then I saw the pool of blood around his head which was growing quickly.
Obviously a crowd quickly gathered, cell phones were whipped out at lightning speed and I think 911 probably got about 12 simultaneous calls (how do they handle the simultaneous calls? I wonder what sort of filtering system is employed, how do they know which are extra calls and which aren't?)
At first I thought he died and it really freaked me out, especially because I found that I couldn't move. I was one of those stupid "let's crowd around" people. I hate those people and there I was being one of those people. I was staring at him, he then took a breath. Thank-god. Unconscious but still breathing, someone checked his pulse. People wanted to move him, we convinced them not to in case he had a spinal cord injury, a paper towel/napkin/kleenex brigade tried to remove as much of the blood away from his face.
The paramedics showed up and a few of us lingered, I got on the subway and went on with my day. I can't get the image out of my head, the dark red blood on the floor of the subway, the man's painting easel on the steps.
Let me preface this by saying that I am fully aware of how insanely self-absorbed this next part is given that I am thinking about myself. The thing is that experiencing that has made me feel so alone and the feeling hasn't left yet insomuch as it is punctuated with remembering the dark red colour of brain blood on a subway floor.