The Many Ways I’ve Almost Died — Part Six
Hi there! 🙂 Let’s pick up from where we left off, shall we?
Possibly the worst instance was when I fell down the escalator or down the “up” escalator.
I was in Boston for a writers’ conference and I accidentally went down to the wrong platform. So I took the “up” escalator to get up to the platform in this train station. I thought I was going to save some money by taking the train to the hotel instead of a cab. Well, let me tell you this “up” escalator was a single file escalator and I had dystonia and my hand was not working right, as usual, and I was trying to pull my bag onto the escalator and it got stuck.
And then, as I was trying to pull it, I fell and I tried to grasp the hand rail. And I didn’t. I failed to grasp it. And I just went down and I was just like upside down on this “up” escalator, you know, pointing downwards. As I said back when I first blogged about this, I fell southbound on a northbound escalator. And so there I was. This guy was behind me, but the suitcase was blocking his ability to get to me and help me up. So I was like, Aaaah! And he said, don’t worry. The top is coming. I was like, okay.
And we get to the top and I get halfway pushed off and I’m still on the escalator. I’m still half on the escalator. So I was pushing myself up to keep my face from getting completely ripped off by the escalator. And I was so scared and my hand was giving out and I thought, any second, now I’m just gonna, my face is just going to turn into hamburger. And I was yelling, Help! Help! Help! Over and over.
And somebody, I heard somebody say, “Hold on, don’t panic, hold on, hold on.” Or something like that. And he came up behind me and somehow I managed to push myself over. And there was this guy leaning down, and I grabbed his hands and he pulled me up and it was just the scariest thing in the world.
And apparently, I cut myself just a little bit and I didn’t know it. And there was blood coming out all over my face and people were walking by looking at me. And I was like, what is it? And then I realized, Oh my God, they’re all looking at my face. So I patted my face. And then I realized there was blood all over my hand and I said, Oh! My! God! Just like that. And then there are these other things that happened that were so strange. I mean, the guy who rescued me said, don’t panic.
He kept saying, don’t panic, don’t panic, though. So I’m like, I’m not panicking. And he said, “Don’t hate me because I’m black.” And then he ran away and I was like, what? And I looked over at these guys who were next to me. I said, “What was that about?” And they just kind of looked at me. And that’s when I realized something was wrong, other than just my falling and that I had blood all over my face. Well, it was just horrible. And I ripped my jeans and I was covered with grease. And it was, ugh, I looked like a wreck.
And I got to the hotel. I took a taxi. Yeah. I ended up saving a lot of money. Right? And I get to the hotel and the people behind the counter are like, “Hi, checking in?” And they didn’t say a thing about how I looked. And I was like, wow, okay. Do people come in here looking like this all the time? They were really professional people, a little professionalism there. But yeah, it came up because I had a little road rash on my chin, actually. It didn’t look too attractive. And I thought, how many agents are going to talk to me in this condition? Well, you’d be surprised. Many of them did. And they seemed really nice, but I didn’t get an agent. Oh, well.
*****
Not quite done, but we’re getting there!
PS: This was an oral retelling of the original thing I blogged, then reblogged here.
More to come! 🙂
Originally published at http://randomandsundrythings.wordpress.com on January 27, 2023.
