Teju ColeVerified account

. . . to the subway, I saw a man on the ground. He sat on the sidewalk, under trees, with his feet out to the quiet street.

Four others were there: a young man busy with a phone, a young woman, a baby in a pram, a girl who was with the woman.

The seated man was closer to sixty than to fifty, dressed in an ordinary way, a button-down long-sleeved shirt, trousers.

The young man with the phone said, "He's having chest pains. Earlier he said he was having chest pains."

"Is it a heart attack?" "I don't know." "Did you call 911?"

He hesitated. Then he said no, and that maybe I should. The man on the ground grimaced and did not look up.

He gave no indication of being aware of our presence. He was tranquil, wordless. The tears were falling from his eyes.

When I finished and had hung up the phone, I tried to talk to my man on the ground but his sound lacked all sound.

Why tears? Because light is beautiful. Because we do not wish to leave something and stray away into nothing.

Because we have some dim awareness that being alive is better than being dead, which might be nothing, which might be nothingness.

He was very still. Dead, possibly.

Coming close to take his pulse, I smelled alcohol. His tear-stained cheek shone. I placed a thumb on his wrist. His hand was cold.

After a few moments, I remembered that the thumb has a pulse of its own, so I placed, instead, two fingers on his wrist.

Distracted by the young man with the phone, the young woman with the pram, the girl, and by my own presence, I was unable to concentrate.

And only then did I also notice his chest subtly rise and fall.

The male EMT had a beautiful name which right away I began to forget: Ahmed, or Hamid, or Aziz, or Hafiz.

"How did he get into that position?" "He lay down there." "Lay how? Did he bang his head?" "He lay down there like someone going to sleep."

"He didn't hit his head on the ground?" "No."

They worked with Homeric clarity. In each unwasted gesture was the message: it's always someone's turn, always someone's bad day.

The female EMT knelt down and checked his pulse with two fingers at the throat. Ahmed, Hafiz, shook him by the shoulders and spoke to him.

No response. With my help and the help of the young man, he is lifted onto the stretcher.

He dips into present tense: his eyes slit open for a moment, and close again. A white froth appears around his mouth. His eyelids glisten.

Without a word to us, the EMTs lifted the stretcher into the back of the ambulance, and without a word to us...

FIN