Sweet, Sweet Calm
It’s hard to explain the exact sequence of movements that brought my back flat to the ties in the middle of the tracks, my right knee a throbbing gush of red. I was running, commuting home by foot as I do on Tuesdays and Thursdays. It was suddenly colder and darker than before, winter intent on sticking around along with the body-baffling change of clocks. The Woodford’s Corner construction was done, meant to clarify which lanes led down four possible branches, excluding the fifth way from which one just came. It was supposed to make it safer for cars, cyclists, and pedestrians.
I finished climbing Vannah in time to catch a green. Crossing Forest Avenue is normally a pain. The steady and endless line of cars are often unwilling to break even from their dead slow crawl to let a person through. I let my pace, which had quickened to cross, decrease a bit.
Two cones of light came at me, vertically stacked, one waist-level, the other head-high. The bike steered right, away from the road, though there was nowhere for it to go other than what I’d call the shoulder or sidewalk area, though it was not elevated or separated by a curb, but rather an extension of the rubber grade used around the rails at a train’s level crossing. This is a maneuver I’ve used while riding: in order to avoid narrow bike wheels from falling into the groove, go at it as perpendicularly as possible.
He couldn’t see me, I knew, because I couldn’t see much myself, and I wasn’t wearing anything reflective, so I tried to get out of his way. Suddenly there was nothing beneath me. I was falling and tumbling exaggeratedly, it didn’t stop for a while, and then I was still and cursing.
“Are you ok?” the cyclist asked.
“FUCKGODDAMNIT,” I yell-said. It wasn’t his fault but he absorbed my outburst.
“Look at your knee,” he said.
I couldn’t muster the explanation. If I look I’ll pass out.
“I’M FINE,” I yell-said, which is how we both knew it wasn’t really true. My face and shoulder hurt, my palms were embedded with debris. I was squarely in the middle of the train tracks. I noticed my wrist was vibrating. My embarrassingly hi-tech running watch had detected an incident and was about to call my emergency contact, my wife. I frantically dismissed it, not wanting to alarm her, not sure how bad my injuries really were.
“I saw your legs go right up, right out from under you. These tracks’ve messed me up too,” he said.
“I’M FINE,” I yell-said again.
The cyclist waited another moment to see if I’d level with him, and when I didn’t, he left.
Free of his surveillance, I scuttled onto the littered berm and put my head between my knees, trying hard to remain conscious. When I realized I was losing that battle, I crept further up the hill into a parking lot and reclined on the asphalt, noticing only after I’d extended my legs straight and felt unable to bend them again that I was in a large puddle.
It felt pleasant, cool. The light cast by the Sinbad Market sign was blocked by a van. I was hidden, so much like ignored roadkill, an unfortunate casualty of the landscape. I worried a parking car might run me over again, though I had to remind myself I hadn’t really been run over a first time. I was being dramatic, feeling sorry for myself.
My determination to stay conscious waned. I needed to flip the switch in order to start back up. It’s hard to deny the element of machismo in my reluctance to admit weakness. I’ve got no conscious objection to receiving help, but now—enfeebled as I am—I wonder what, if anything, might’ve convinced me to seek it out.
Instead, I yell-said “I’M FINE” again, nobody left to argue with me, and yielded to sweet, sweet calm.