Compost Studios

Gray. Rainy. Windy in my corner of Belgium.

I gather in the bus shelter with the others who are waiting for the bus to the Metro station. As usual, no one speaks. In America, there might have been a bit of idle chitchat, a comment about the horrid weather or someone saying they hope the bus arrives on time, but here there is a civil silence. We are all together but we are far apart.

When the bus arrives and I take my seat next to a fogged and rain streaked window, my mind wanders into prayer. Lately the list of people I know dealing with heartache or health problems or difficult situations seems especially long, and I use the silence and quiet hum of the bus ride to reach out across time and space to those in need: a young woman in unrelenting pain, high risk pregnancies, a baby that needs a liver transplant, a friend awaiting biopsy results, a woman who has had sinus surgery, a former neighbor battling cancer, E’s mom struggling to walk again, and toughest of all, a little girl we know who appears to have a massive tumor on her kidney.

My bus journey ends, and then my Metro trip begins. Traveling in a bubble of anonymity, I continue to string prayers along like beads, trying to focus and visualize each person, each need.

At Arts-Loi, I step off the Metro and straight into a crisis. Someone has collapsed onto the station floor and is surrounded by several people kneeling nearby. I see black oxfords and pants, a pale face turned to one side with brown hair spilling across the brow, eyes closed, breasts rising and falling underneath a forest green t-shirt, movements that make me think “seizure.”

I pause for just a moment, wanting to dive in and help, but I realize in the same instant that multiple people have already done just that. I’m blocking people trying to get off the train, I need to get out of the way, I should move on even though part of me feels rooted in the moment, the desire to DO SOMETHING.

I go left and walk away, refusing to join the crowd that is growing around the woman’s body. I’ve always felt it was wrong to linger at the scene of an accident or crisis, that it violates the victim’s privacy at one of their most vulnerable moments, that curiosity should not be indulged. But as I put distance between myself and the drama at the Metro station, I think about the crowd in a different way. For a moment I can see them as a small community, united in concern and sympathy and wishing for a happy ending. I want to be part of it but I continue to trudge up the steps.

Emerging from underground, I cross Regentlaan and see a police van parked in the median and two officers standing beside it. Do they know about the problem under their feet? Should I approach them?

My thoughts are interrupted by approaching sirens, a yellow panel truck screaming down the access road. Ah, it’s an emergency response truck. They park and two men get out in orange vests and yellow suits, toting red packs. They head into the Metro just as an ambulance comes into view and double parks to follow. First one police car, then a second, pulls up with sirens blaring.

What the hell is going on? I’d assumed the woman on the floor of the station was ill; I never considered she might have been injured. Had I just left a crime scene? Had someone attacked her? I have no idea.

With the rain pelting my umbrella, I turn my back on all the activity, the flashing lights, the professional helpers, the unexpected victims and heroes, the unfolding story in the station.

As I walk away, I add the woman in the green t-shirt to my string of prayers.

February 28, 2007