12-9

The Times’ City Section takes a closer look at the nightmarish notion of being thrown in front of a subway:

It is the dark fear of anyone who has gazed down at the subway tracks, leaned out from a platform to search the distance for a pair of headlights, or felt a sharp underground breeze kick up at the crescendoing rumble of train wheels. A trip and fall, or a loss of balance, or a sudden jolt or push from behind . . . and then a plunge, to the damp, grimy floor between the glistening rails.

Half submerged in New York’s collective unconscious, alongside dirty bombs and dark-alley robberies, is the nightmare of somehow winding up in the path of an oncoming train.

The transit workers’ union estimates that people get hit by trains at a surprising rate of one or two a week. The transit worker code for this is “12-9,” and as you can guess, it freaks out subway conductors:

“Imagine spending the whole day on that train,” a motorman named William Martinez once said in a Bronx diner near the end of the D line, his route for several years. “It’s an exercise in staying awake. I was telling somebody it’s like watching the same movie 1,000 times, but having to watch for that one detail in it that’s different every time.”

But far worse than the boredom, the numbing sameness, is the jolt that can come out of nowhere, turning lives upside down in a split second.

For Mr. Martinez, it had come in Harlem in November 2002, when a woman standing with her husband on the platform at the 125th Street/St. Nicholas Avenue station abruptly started running toward the edge, then jumped. When he saw her legs flip up into the air before she disappeared under the train, he feared the worst, but somehow she survived. He got down on the tracks and helped lift her out from between the cars where she had ended up. Only later, in a meeting with two supervisors after he took his train out of service, did he feel tears on his face and realize that he could not stop shaking. Back at the control center, someone congratulated him: The delay in service was only 17 minutes.

In case you were wondering, the procedure for a 12-9 goes something like this:

Minutes after the train grinds to a halt after a 12-9, it is the train operator’s job to climb down, flashlight in hand, and inspect the tracks. The logic is that the operator is inevitably among the first people on the scene, and whoever is under the train could still be alive and either in need of help, bruised or bleeding, or inches from the perilous third rail.

. . .

For most subway workers, the harsh side of the job is not something they bargain for.

But then somebody jumps in front of a train, or is pushed, or gets sick and falls to the roadbed after drinking too much or missing breakfast. Most riders do not even notice, because subway workers have become so efficient at cleanup. First, trains are rerouted out of the area. Next, all the body parts are gathered. Finally, because the blood cannot be wiped up so easily, workers put down an absorbent layer of sand. If the scene is right, and the weather isn’t too cold, the blood dries up. In time, the sand drifts away, carried off on the breezes that flow through the tunnels day and night.