An Unexpected Stop On Mu My Ride

Every day except one (Monday) during the past week we’ve had daytime high temperatures in the mid-90s (around 35C). And our days have been, ahem, graced with our (in)famous East Coast humidity.

So I have been taking early morning rides, mainly to and near bodies of water, and getting back to my apartment or the Garden before the midday heat.

Today didn’t exactly go according to plan, but I’m not complaining. I started riding later than I intended, but an unexpected encounter added a couple of hours to my ride.

I had just done a “loop” around Randall’s Island and crossed the Connector (which runs under the viaduct for the Amtrak and Metro North trains) back into the Bronx. While pedaling along the Willow Avenue lane to 138th Street, I saw three people—a young man and woman and someone who looked about 15 or 20 years older—gathered around someone who sat leaning against a railing. As I approached, I also saw a bicycle—specifically a red and black BMC road bike. 

As I got even closer, I saw blood streaked on his face. He lifted a towel to reveal its source:  a gash on his head.

He’d struck something in the path, he said, and held out his arm as he fell. It hurt, he said, but he could still move it, so he didn’t think it was broken. We were more worried about his head.

The young woman—his sister —had already called an ambulance. The older woman, his mother, talked to him (in Spanish) and rubbed him. The other young man, his brother, had brought a bottle of water and the towel. Turns out, they live only a couple of blocks away and could come quickly when he called. 

I couldn’t see what else, exactly, I could do. I offered my help nonetheless. Truth was, I didn’t want to leave the young man or his family until they got the help they needed: Having been in a couple of crashes myself, I was empathizing, if nothing else.

I made another call for an ambulance. Part of me thought simply that multiple calls would hasten its arrival; the cynic in me thought we might get a quicker response if the operator heard a Caucasian-sounding voice speaking English without a foreign accent.

I think the sister articulated one of the reasons why we waited so long—more than an hour. “Hay mucha gente mayor aqui”—there are many old people in the neighborhood. And the day’s heat was no doubt triggering or exacerbating their medical conditions.

Each of us made another call for an ambulance. Finally, in frustration, she called for an Uber. A driver arrived within five minutes. But, looking at the injured young man, he refused, saying he could be fined for taking him to a hospital.*

Finally, an ambulance showed up and took him and his sister to Metropolitan Hospital. A few minutes ago, his mother called to thank me and let me know that her son will be OK, although the prognosis was the opposite of what any of us expected: In spite of the blood that ran down his face, his head wound wasn’t as bad as anyone thought and he doesn’t have a concussion. He actually hurt his arm worse:  There’s a fracture just above his elbow.

His mother told me that when he rides again “aseguare de que use su casco”: I will make sure that he wears his helmet.

*—None of us knew, until then, that such a law existed. But it makes sense: EMTs and firefighters are trained to move victims’ bodies. An untrained Uber driver (or anyone else) could cause further harm.