Effed on The F: Sick Passengers Should Blow Me
Benjamin | Friday, December 5, 2008 at 9:31AM 
I was on the fucking F train for ONE hour this morning. We sat at Jay Street for literally 20 minutes because of a sick passenger
What the hell does this even mean?
I'm being serious as a heart attack: From a physical, logistical standpoint, how does a sick passenger cause a train to sit in a station for twenty minutes?
Dramatization:
Concerned Passenger #1: Oh my god, that woman looks terrible!
Concerned Passenger #2: Oh god, she's fainting! Give her air!
(Chorus of Gasps)
Concerned Passenger #1: Let's get her off the train and call an abmulence!"
Dr. House: Touch her and I'll break your arm. Nobody move this woman from her fucking seat.
Concerned Passenger #2: What?
Dr. House: Sorry, this isn't Biology class- I don't have time to explain the difference between your ass and your elbow. Somebody get me a paper clip.
Dr. House's Good Looking Blonde Austrailian Resident Guy: In the moments immediately following a fainting spell, a patient is at a heightened susceptibility for complications such as stroke or aneurysm. These conditions are often prevented by a static environment: any shift to the patient's surroundings - change in air density, aural ambience, or even movement itself – and the susceptibility increases tenfold.
Dr. House: Nice job professor, now if you’re done with the lesson, get me some lipstick and a trapper-keeper: STAT.
Or what? So if you’re sick, I feel bad for you, but can’t you get off the fucking train and be sick in the station or outside in the ambulance? Is the train really that comfortable?
This I’d be able to understand:
"Ladies and Gentleman we are delayed in the station due to a passenger whose forearm is caught under the train’s wheel – as soon as she is pried out and brought to safety we shall proceed."
But sick?
Hook us up please – when you’re sick, get off the train, go puke in the station, and when it happens to me, I’ll do the same.
Have a nice weekend!
F train 
-->
Reader Comments (21)
I'm not trying to be insensitive to the plight of a sick passenger(who knows the person could've had a seizure), but you had a pretty good idea that you're not feeling alright before you got on a train. Why would you get on? This is the freaking nonsense that's going to cause the downfall of our civilization. Some "It's all about me" fuck is going to break a quarantine, carrying a super flu, and then get on a bus or a plane and end life as we know it.
mmm.. I have to weigh in here, transplant from Miami, where we live in bubbles known as our cars and our personal space... when I moved here I always thought, holly shit if I get sick and I have to get home from mid-town depedning on the time of day, the train is the best way of getting there.
Fast forward, and it happend to me, I had to get on the train, after puking my brains out... yea, it totally sucked, I wasn't "THE" sick passengar, but I was one upchuck away from being him...
So what do you do? Get in gridlock traffic in a cap for hours (it's happend) or get on the train and play it stop-to-stop?
@Arock
you GET OFF the train, dumbshit. Read the fucking post.
@yermom...obviously you get off the train retard, but that's not what I'm getting at , my question is do you opt to get on the train to begin with? If you have no other way of getting home, do you choose to knowingly get on a train while being sick? dumbshit.
How bout this!: I was on the Q last month on my normal commute in and some woman fainted. I was jammed up against the poll and just about to turn around to glare at whatever motherfucker had just bumped me, and then I saw her on the ground. Some Russian woman went to help her up, but basically everyone did NOTHING. It took me a minute to snap to it, but I looked around and saw no one else was helping her, so I tried to jump in. I "asked" one of the very noble fat-assed gentleman sitting down (staring at everything going on and, again, doing nothing) if they wouldn't mind moving their fat ass so that this woman could at least sit down. We were on our way over the Manhattan bridge (between DeKalb and Canal) so there was really no place for us to stop and get help (so I dismissed that idea). Anyway, she said she was ok, and I asked her if she wanted to get off when we got to Canal and she said No. I got off at Union Square and that was that.
Mostly I was, yet again, blown away by how un-fucking chivalrous every man who rides the NYC subway is (and how everyone else just didn't give a shit).
@Arock...its an interesting question. I mean, I've gotten on the train when I've felt super nauseous. But I don't think me or you would be like "hey...I think I might be having a heart attack...maybe I'll hop on the F and see if this shit passes." I *guess* maybe the sick passengers didn't realize how sick they were? I don't know...we should get some insider from the MTA to pipe up.
Arock I don't want to tool on you like Yermom, but the MTA has wasted millions of surplus dollars on psa campaigns on trains advising riders not to board trains when feeling ill. Now the MTA is crying poverty and I have to pay an extra 50 cents cause you can't follow rules. In all seriousness though, Arock, I know it sucks when that happens, but sometimes you gotta walk it off before you get in a moving vehicle.
@Erica, have you ever seen the lack of caring as some 20 something year old just sits there on a crowded train just looking up at a frail old lady who can hardly stand? We've become a society of motherless assholes.
Technically, they tell you not to get on the train if you're sick or think you may be sick... So I guess you just pass out on the street vs. trying to make it home or to the hospital...or to that skanks house that got you sick to begin with so you can puke on her sheets...
So you either call 911 for yourself...or hope some stranger does it for your... or finish your sickness on the street...hey maybe that's where all the bums come from, they were once working professionals who were sick and opted to wait until they felt better to go home... and totally forgot where they lived.
@ Erica, you should be working on the showdown.... I hear you though, and that story about the passsengar is all too common.
i heard once that "sick passenger" is code for someone who jumped in front of a train...
hahahaha funny shit
House Asst Speech FTW
anon 11:52, i heard that too. At least they keep it real - THAT'S a sick passenger.
@Danny: YES...I see it constantly. I always get up (I see other women get up) and I never see any men move. A good number of them will play the game where they pretend to be asleep, but I don't buy it. I also see pregnant women left to stand constantly. It's fascinating too cause everytime I bring ths up my husband, my guy friends, they all SWEAR that they get up. But I make a point of watching...and rarely ever see dudes getting up for anyone.
@Arock: it's comin!
@Erica, sadly I see that too. It wasn't always like that, especially with men who were raised in NY, we were always raised to be more considerate and I just don't see it any more.
@Arock, I'm not suggesting just lying in the street and dying, but If your sick and a train pulls into the station you have every opportunity then to alert the train's conductor before you get on board, to get help. If you managed to get to the platform, you can stand where the first car pulls in. Where the hell did that diatribe on homelessness come from? I am capable of understanding that a majority of the homeless in NYC are mentally ill and need life time supervised mental health care; that they used to receive before the federal government cut funding and left it up to state to resolve themselves. Please don't posit such a stereotypical view of the homeless on me, that I never even expressed, just so you can post, with a phony moral superiority, a reply to an off topic point I never even made.
@ Danny...
Woooo....Was totally joking about the homeless, no reference to you, your commment or the post in general. Totally getting hated on in this post, I'm going back to the Food discussion.
I hear you on telling the conductor...I'm just saying some people have no choice but to board the train and try to make it home. Either because they have no health insurance, or feel that they aren't hospital bound type of sick...
@Arock, wow I'm really sorry about that tirade then. I really thought you were serious about the homeless thing and taking some high moral ground position on it. I realized after re-reading the post, that you were just openly wondering what is the solution when you get ill in a train station. My sincere apologies.
Phew! Now we can all go back to being BFF's again.
Danny, don't be such a fuckin pussy. Fuck this bitch, she's obviously crazy.
@Anon, you're an absolute moron!! Just had to get it out there.
@ Danny, no worries dude, it's hard to convey humor on this thing.
@Erica, you rock...
With the assumption that the semi-regular "sick passenger" delays are actually bonafide, I'd add, at risk of pointing out the obvious:
We're probably living at the most frenetic pace of anyone in this godforsaken pisshole of a nation state. We're balancing work, life, and social calendars against an array of millions. AND WE'RE DOING IT ALL ON THE TRAIN.
We're pounding slices, taking out our visiting friends, going to the craft fair to stroke Santa's hemp beard, fuck, we're taking ourselves to the emergency room... all by subway!
So yeah, you might be able to avoid getting sick on the train... In the 2 seconds you might have to decide if you're going to pass out on the G-- which according to Murphy's Law is pulling up to your stop right this instant-- you might not.
The faints and the pukes can onset pretty suddenly, as can the aforementioned super bird flu, the devastating effects of which could upset the global power structure and lead to a super-immune race of shawarma-scarfing Park Slope gentility whose progeny have wings
In my 4 years living in New York, taking the subway at least 11 times per week, I have been on trains with sick passengers only 4 times. Maybe I've just been lucky.
I think you should do a post about how people who block the doors from closing and slow the train down at every goddamn stop or the people who take up more than their fair share of a subway seat by spreading out and getting comfortable can blow all of us.
@david
Your comment is literally unintelligible. It reads like it was written by a grad student who forgot his adderral.
What the fuck are you trying to say?
Say it again in English and don't worry so much about sounding like James Joyce.
hopefully FIPS will never fall sick or have a heart attack on the train, or will! YAY!
It's like the others said: "sick passenger" is code for person hit by train. It takes a while to clean up and understandably they'd rather people not gawk.
You should do a post on airplane food instead.