Written on May 12, 2014
He'd been standing when she boarded the subway, hand firmly gripping an overhead pole. Some time into the ride he'd pulled out his phone to read a just-received text. The look on his face, as well as the fact that he sat down as he read the message, prompted her to remove her headphones and ask if something was the matter. He'd replied that he was just fine, great, in fact. He remarked that after 8 years of battling leukemia, of chemo and radiation therapy, he was finally cancer free. Now he could do whatever he wanted, no longer held back by all that cancer implied. He was to travel the world, meet foreign women, see extraordinary places. She'd congratulated him, legitimately happy that this stranger had just won a nearly impossible battle.Their conversation and congratulations were interrupted, however, when the tunnel around them began shaking and jolting. An earthquake? On the east coast? She supposed they were possible. As they passed through a closed station, how unlikely it was that the earthquake had ruptured the water main. Water gushed through the dark, empty room, finally slamming the car's windows and watertight doors. The force was enough to derail the train; it flipped onto its side, and as it did so the leukemia boy fell forward, slamming his head on a vertical handgrip pole. He was dead as soon as it happened, and later, as they were all rescued, she couldn't help but notice the boy being wheeled away in a body bag. How quickly these things could happen... That boy had died without seeing the world, without doing what he wanted. A cruel world indeed...