Escalators

Have you ever seen someone fall down an escalator? It’s fucking awful, every bit of it. Ever seen how much a human head bleeds? Chances are if you see the reality behind these falls and the aftermath, the rush of people storming over to save someone’s life, you may think twice taking those magic stairs. You may be more careful. I hope to God that you are.

Three days ago, I get back from my lunch break, and someone’s fallen down the up escalator. I haven’t seen the footage, I didn’t see him fall, but there was an elderly man who missed a step, fell backwards, and hit his head hard enough that he started bleeding heavy. When I got back from lunch, they got a defibrillator out, the escalator had been stopped and blocked off as well as the nearby stairway, and right at the top of the escalator, they had him kept as well as they could while the paramedics showed up.

Apparently, no one thought he was going to make it. He was bleeding so hard from his head that he bled through two different shirts they pulled out for him. The guy who brought over the defibrillator thought he was gone, our LP thought he was gone, and even my head manager thought he was gone. By some miracle, the paramedics came just in time, and using a defibrillator of their own, they got the guy back to consciousness. They asked if he knew where he was, what day it was, how many fingers were they holding up, everything. He was breathing and moving his eyes with a pulse when they carried him away on a stretcher. Somehow he survived.

There was a mess to clean, for sure. Have you ever seen how much a head bleeds? Through two shirts, this guy bled, and before the shirts had even come out, his blood had trailed down and hit every single fucking step on the escalator. Every single one. After the guy fell and stopped halfway down, they had it ride him back up to the top so they’d have room to help him out. And while it took him back up, he bled on every stair.

I helped our maintenance guy clean everything. So many streaks of blood, the process took us upwards of half an hour if not longer. It was brutal, and it was reminder, seeing that there, that blood is life. How much of his life had left him on those stairs?

Finally we got it done. He sprayed any small bits we couldn’t fully get to with chemicals to at least prevent pathogens, and the job was done.

So we’re finishing and an older guy comes up to us, seeing that we’ve turned on the escalator again, and asks if we’re getting it open. The maintenance guy said it was good to go, stepped out of the way, and the guy got going up the escalator. I look up to the top.

There’s a fucking sign at the top of the stairs, and it’s right in the guy’s way. If you haven’t experienced that slow motion effect where alarm bells start ringing and everything feels slow as you mentally piece together the unraveling scenes, know the rush when you realize that you are the only fit person that can do something. The hit that you have to do something, or the guy that’s going up could get hurt just as bad as the guy you just saved. I have never been so afraid of the well-being of someone that’s not my immediate family.

I threw the escalator key to the ground and ran up the stairs faster than I’ve ever ran up a flight of stairs before, I grabbed the sign and moved it out of the way before the guy hit it. He thought it was funny.

“Show-off,” he said, and laughed. I laughed too.

When you’re genuinely scared in a setting of people who are simply living their lives, they will never understand you. It’s like complaining of migraines in a room of people who have never had one. When you fear for someone’s life, there is only their life, and the only person that can prevent them from safety is you. I ran not because I had to but because I was afraid. Because what if I didn’t? I wouldn’t be able to sleep that night or even now if I allowed that guy to try and move the sign himself and not fall down.

Please, for the love of yourself and others, please be safe on escalators. I’m not saying that guy wasn’t, but bad things can happen if you aren’t careful, and it’s not worth the pain of falling down. The escalator will not stop if you bleed, it will stop when you get to the top.