Rush Hour

Winner of the 4/21/02 Writer's Cramp contest for which the prompt was to write a 1,000 word story containing:

a busy Subway station, a man, a woman, and a relationship. Story is about finding yourself.

Rush Hour

Kate ran down the stairs to the Subway Station, shaking her head in frustration. It was Friday night rush hour, and no doubt she’d have to stand on the train all the way uptown.

She’d tried to get out of the office early so she could take a shower and grab a quick bite before heading back to the hospital. But now she’d be lucky to make it before the end of visiting hours. Maybe she could just skip tonight and go spend the day tomorrow?

She shouldered her way through the crowd, feeling like a salmon swimming upstream, dropped her token in the turnstile, and inched her way to the platform. Once there, she leaned on a concrete pillar, and native New Yorker that she was, pretended to read a paperback to avoid making eye contact with any of her fellow travelers while they waited together for the train.

She wondered if she’d left work late on purpose, unconsciously hoping to miss seeing her father at the hospital that night. He looked so fragile lying in that bed. Her father, always so strong, always larger than life when she was growing up, reduced to skin and bones as he lay there, tubes and wires everywhere. She wasn’t sure how much more if it she could take.

He’d been at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital just over a week, the end stages of cancer. Kate had dutifully visited him all day on Saturday and Sunday, and before and after work during the week. She was going to ask for time off work to be able to be there all day, but he wouldn’t hear of it. And truth be told, it was starting to take its toll on her, seeing him like that, so helpless, day after day, waiting to die, with only his daughter to visit him because her mother, his wife, had died five years earlier.

He’d sat vigil at her bedside, ignoring Kate’s pleas for him to go home and rest and let her take over for a few hours. “I can’t leave, Katie,” he’d told her as he held her mother’s hand. “Yes, it’s hard, yes it’s painful, but I’ve so little time left with her, I don’t want to miss one second of it. I owe her that much, Katie. She’d do the same for me.”

The Express Train rattled past without stopping, bringing Kate back to the present as she lifted her eyes from her book and looked around. A man sat on the edge of a wooden bench, a little girl in his lap.

“Daddy the train forgot to stop!” she cried out, hot and impatient, nearing a whine.

“That’s because it wasn’t our train,” he soothed gently, bouncing her on his lap. “Ours is a special train, just for us. The next one is ours, I promise!”

He caught Kate’s eye as she watched them, and winked at her. Kate smiled back, sheepishly, as the little girl leaned back into her father’s chest and reached up to tickle his chin, which made them both giggle, lost in their own little world despite the irritable crowd swarming around them.

As Kate watched them she remembered her own father taking her on the subway when she was a little girl. He’d always made it a special adventure for the two of them, no matter where they were going. If they went to Wall Street to pick up something at his office on a weekend, he pretended they were on a secret mission for the government. Or if he was taking her to the doctor, they made believe they were touring Europe on the Orient Express.

Countless other memories flooded Kate’s mind as she watched the little girl and her father. Some good, some not as good, but as she replayed them in her mind she remembered that no matter where she went in life, no matter what she did, no matter which boyfriend she was with or which job she was doing, the one constant in her life had been that she’d always known that her father loved her.

And even when they had disagreements and misunderstandings about where her life path was taking her as she grew up and moved away to become her own person, she knew in the deepest part of her heart that her father loved her more than anything in the world, and that he’d always been there for her. Which made her feel guilty for the dread she’d felt at the thought of spending another night with him lying there so vulnerable, so pale, so alone against those stark white sheets.

She glanced at her watch and made a quick calculation. If she went back upstairs and hailed a cab, she could probably be at the hospital in half an hour. If she took the train home and showered like she had planned, she’d not arrive for another hour and a half at least, and she might not get in to see him tonight.

Without giving it another thought, she turned just as her train arrived at the platform, and took the stairs two at a time up to the street, where she dashed over to the large hotel on the corner and stood in line for a cab.

She’d go and sit by his bedside and hold his hand, and not leave until he was gone, no matter what he said. Yes it would be hard, yes it would be painful. But if he protested, she’d simply tell him that she had so little time left with him, she didn’t want to miss one second of it.

She owed him that much. He’d do the same for her.