Where's George?

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Wednesday, December 13, 2006

So, there I was in one of those ‘movie moments’ – the world frozen around me as the pain shot through my wrist and out in the form of a scream. Petite blonde lady, in a business suit, collapsed in the shape of one of those chalked body outlines, travel buff pantyhose ripped and marred where I had landed on the dirty street, briefcase and one shoe lying on the ground next to me, just outside the Wall Street subway exit just after 9am on a rainy Wednesday morning. My shoe had come off on one of the lower steps in the human-cattle call that is Wall Street at pedestrian rush hour. Self conscious that I had held up the stream of people behind me in the process of trying to get my shoe back on, I had run up the last few steps. My toe caught the underside of the last step and I went flying. As I tried to get my feet under me, it only increased my momentum, sending me airborne in one of those classic arms-flailing-vertical-bodied diving falls. I landed over ten feet from where I tripped – left wrist first. That would be the left wrist that I had wrapped in an ace bandage the night before. Why? Because the inexplicable pain that I had woken with the morning before had turned into unbearable pain that night. Did I interrupt the time continuum or what? How is it that your wrist begins to hurt the day before you injure it?

I was only aware of two things as people crowded around my contorted body on the dirty pavement – the excruciating pain enveloping me and this little foreign man’s voice saying over and over “Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God!” He must have seen me take flight and the ultimate crash. Once the pain had ceased to blind me, I did a mental scan of my body and realized I was fine except the wrist, which I prayed wasn’t broken, a ruined pair of pantyhose, and an ounce of lost pride. Some New Yorker I am!

I never saw any of the people around me,...

 not even the little man (I don’t know why I thought he was little, I guess he just sounded little). I asked these invisible Samaritans if they would help me up and felt several hands reach under my shoulders and arms as they lifted me to my feet. I slipped my shoe on as someone handed me my briefcase. I smiled to no one and everyone, still unable to focus, as I slipped my briefcase on my good arm, cradling my wrist to my chest, said I was fine and marched down the street as if nothing had happen. I made it one block before I stopped and began to cry.

I realized as I tried to process what had just happened that while I had physically sensed everything - the air whizzing by as I fell, the pain at impact, the people around who had lifted me, the sound of that little old man’s repeated cry, I had actually watched the whole thing from somewhere above – like one of those movie moments filmed down through the skyscrapers. Wasn’t that a scene in Closer? (and a dozen other movies?) Girl falls on New York street, people stop, circling, some hoping for tragedy, others hoping to help. It felt like that – those moments when you swear you are Jim Carrey in Truman and the world is staged around you.

Then I realized, as I stood in the rain, clutching my possibly-broken wrist to my chest, crying, and probably in some degree of shock, that I had been gypped. In every one of those movies, George Clooney, or Jude Law, or Cary Grant, or some other handsome young yearning doctor pushes their way through the crowd, bends down to help the poor damsel in distress, catching her eyes as he does so in a long visual embrace that will soon develop into a steamy passionate lovemaking embrace. I wanted to march right back to that subway exit and declare a retake. “George, baby, you missed your cue call!” I thought as I walked through the rain to my next interview. Where was my handsome young doctor, come to save me? Sometimes life just isn’t fair!

Comments

[Shellen]

Perhaps George was actually there, but because you were watching from above you didn't see him . . .

[KArin]

Dear Sherry, what a text! What a picture! I read it twice just to enjoy the words, the setting and the craft you put into it. As for the Georges of this world, they are never ever near there anyway. We just get up and go on, right?
Love

[Jero]

Sherry, It does me good to read your storytellings,... it takes me back to a nicer times in Norway and Belgium,...

[Lars]

hey baby, sorry to hear 'bout your your accident. Could readily imagine the scenery - poor girl...