Up again at 3 in the morning and back at my perch in the window. I lean my forearms against the back of the couch and make a tent of the curtains, just my head poking through. Tonight there’s an ambulance in front of the Duane Reade, lights flashing like crazy. There’s also an SUV parked in the bus lane and the ambulance has parked directly parallel and very close to it, which feels awfully passive-aggressive for 3 am especially since there is not another vehicle in the bus lane and the ambulance could have just pulled forward but whatever, ambulance driver: you have something you need to work out, you do you.
A figure that I think is a woman, but it’s a little hard to tell as she’s lean and dressed in a shapeless overalls situation with a kerchief on her head, approaches the ambulance, tilted over by the weight of a backpack she’s holding. She tries the side door but it’s locked and she steps back in frustration, then goes around and tries the back—that’s locked, too. After a minute an ambulance guy gets out of the passenger seat and unlocks the side door and ushers her in and she climbs aboard like it’s nbd and she’s done it a million times before. Now they have my attention and I’m definitely curious to know what’s going on inside this ambulance. The first guy has gotten back into the passenger seat and shut the door and it’s only because I’m extremely nosy that I just happen to be looking right at the scene when some dude rolls up and drives his car directly into the back of the bus. Like, he was bombing up 8th Avenue and just ran directly into the back of this ambulance which is parked under streetlights and has so many flashing lights going on I can’t look directly at it.
There’s this tiny pause, and then the dude who has just driven in to the back of a parked ambulance shifts into reverse, backs up a bit, then smoothly pulls around the ambulance and drives away. At the same time the two ambulance guys come boiling out of the bus, one from the passenger seat and the other from the back door, and one of them chases the car up 8th while the other guy immediately starts taking pictures of the damage which I think is a little weird, like how horrible can your insurance company be, ambulance people, and my hand to god he has to go back into the cab and turn the flashers off because it’s clearly impossible to take a picture with everything set to psychedelic disco mode.
When the first ambulance guy doesn’t come back right away, I repair to my bedroom window so I can see further along 8th Ave and it turns out the dope who ran into the bus has in fact pulled over, but almost at the end of the block, like maybe he spent just a fraction of a minute thinking about his options. I can just see the white of the ambulance guy’s shirt and I guess he is guarding the dude but it’s not long before the intersection is teeming with police cars and it must be a slow night because a bunch of cops get out and now they’re all milling around, a couple of them smoking cigarettes and chatting and not looking like they’re going anywhere soon. The side door of the ambulance opens and the person with the giant backpack slips out. A couple of the cops move toward her but she talks to them for a minute and then kind of waves her arm like she’s got to go somewhere and they let her and she disappears up the street. I definitely have theories on that one but they are unsubstantiated so I am keeping them to myself.
Two more ambulances roll by, paramedics leaning out the windows as cops stroll over to talk, and while I can’t hear anything from here, six floors up and the windows closed, I get the distinct impression this is a novelty and has livened up the night a bit. I notice a cop with a notepad talking to a street-looking dude and I’m trying to guess if he’s an undercover officer who happened to be in the area or just an actual street dude fulfilling his civic duty. There’s something collegial in the way they walk to the back of the bus and examine the damage, the maybe-street-dude conjuring a diagram of the trajectory and timeline of the incident in the air, but eventually the cop closes his notebook and the street guy hangs around for a minute and then finally shuffles off down 53rd Street.
At some point in the middle of this, the guy who has been illegally parked in the bus lane shows up. He’s wearing a reflective vest and a hard hat and he pauses to size up the situation then manages to slink through the crowd of police and EMTs and wedge open the driver’s side door of his vehicle just enough to slide himself in. No one seems to notice or care and I picture him tossing his hard hat into the passenger seat and shaking his head like yeesh as he pulls away.
This window seat set-up isn’t as comfortable as the one in the living room but I am rewarded for my sacrifice by being able to juuust see the guy who drove into the ambulance. He’s been leaning against the trunk of his car for ages now, arms folded, looking as composed as a person can look while wearing jhorts and it’s now nearly 4 in the morning and he’s just crashed into a stationary ambulance positively covered with strobing lights. Finally, he is turned around and handcuffed and led to a cruiser. There is more extensive standing around and talking and a few more cop/official-looking cars show up, more people to walk around to the back of the ambulance and look at whatever dents there are in the bumper, a sparkle of broken glass glinting in the streetlights. Finally, all but a couple of the cop cars disperse and then there is some complicated maneuvering that needs to be done to the car that ran into the bus which involves a cop getting in and driving it up and then reversing back down 8th Avenue with the driver’s side door left wide open and one leg casually dangling out which absolutely looked super cool until he turned the steering wheel slightly and the door started to swing closed on him and he had to jerk his leg in really fast.
I am reminded of the time the cops locked the keys in their clown car in almost the exact same spot and I wonder if any of the cops remember that, too, and are standing around trading stories about the dumbest thing they’ve ever seen happen on this particular corner as it does seem to be a bit of a magnet for trouble. That triggers another memory: it was this same intersection where I saw a car turning right onto 8th actually hit a pedestrian, not super hard but definitely hard enough to knock her down, but I guess the woman was so embarrassed (??) that she’d been obliviously looking at her phone that even though she had the light she just got up and shook herself off and darted away and the driver hesitated for like three seconds before s/he must have just shrugged and been like, Okay, whatever, and drove on.
It’s after 4 now and while a little bit I want to wait for the tow truck to come just to see this through to completion, just about every cop who’s made a stop at this scene has walked around to the back of the ambulance to take a gander at the damage and then, casually, sometimes not even looking, walked out into the traffic lanes on 8th Avenue to rejoin the scrum further up the block. If some dope can manage to run directly into a parked ambulance, flashing lights and all, I assume it would be even easier to rubberneck at that situation and accidentally pick off somebody dressed in dark navy moving through the shadow alongside that ambulance and for the love of pete, cops, consider reflective vests and/or using the sidewalk, I have seen enough for one night.
x
A figure that I think is a woman, but it’s a little hard to tell as she’s lean and dressed in a shapeless overalls situation with a kerchief on her head, approaches the ambulance, tilted over by the weight of a backpack she’s holding. She tries the side door but it’s locked and she steps back in frustration, then goes around and tries the back—that’s locked, too. After a minute an ambulance guy gets out of the passenger seat and unlocks the side door and ushers her in and she climbs aboard like it’s nbd and she’s done it a million times before. Now they have my attention and I’m definitely curious to know what’s going on inside this ambulance. The first guy has gotten back into the passenger seat and shut the door and it’s only because I’m extremely nosy that I just happen to be looking right at the scene when some dude rolls up and drives his car directly into the back of the bus. Like, he was bombing up 8th Avenue and just ran directly into the back of this ambulance which is parked under streetlights and has so many flashing lights going on I can’t look directly at it.
There’s this tiny pause, and then the dude who has just driven in to the back of a parked ambulance shifts into reverse, backs up a bit, then smoothly pulls around the ambulance and drives away. At the same time the two ambulance guys come boiling out of the bus, one from the passenger seat and the other from the back door, and one of them chases the car up 8th while the other guy immediately starts taking pictures of the damage which I think is a little weird, like how horrible can your insurance company be, ambulance people, and my hand to god he has to go back into the cab and turn the flashers off because it’s clearly impossible to take a picture with everything set to psychedelic disco mode.
When the first ambulance guy doesn’t come back right away, I repair to my bedroom window so I can see further along 8th Ave and it turns out the dope who ran into the bus has in fact pulled over, but almost at the end of the block, like maybe he spent just a fraction of a minute thinking about his options. I can just see the white of the ambulance guy’s shirt and I guess he is guarding the dude but it’s not long before the intersection is teeming with police cars and it must be a slow night because a bunch of cops get out and now they’re all milling around, a couple of them smoking cigarettes and chatting and not looking like they’re going anywhere soon. The side door of the ambulance opens and the person with the giant backpack slips out. A couple of the cops move toward her but she talks to them for a minute and then kind of waves her arm like she’s got to go somewhere and they let her and she disappears up the street. I definitely have theories on that one but they are unsubstantiated so I am keeping them to myself.
Two more ambulances roll by, paramedics leaning out the windows as cops stroll over to talk, and while I can’t hear anything from here, six floors up and the windows closed, I get the distinct impression this is a novelty and has livened up the night a bit. I notice a cop with a notepad talking to a street-looking dude and I’m trying to guess if he’s an undercover officer who happened to be in the area or just an actual street dude fulfilling his civic duty. There’s something collegial in the way they walk to the back of the bus and examine the damage, the maybe-street-dude conjuring a diagram of the trajectory and timeline of the incident in the air, but eventually the cop closes his notebook and the street guy hangs around for a minute and then finally shuffles off down 53rd Street.
At some point in the middle of this, the guy who has been illegally parked in the bus lane shows up. He’s wearing a reflective vest and a hard hat and he pauses to size up the situation then manages to slink through the crowd of police and EMTs and wedge open the driver’s side door of his vehicle just enough to slide himself in. No one seems to notice or care and I picture him tossing his hard hat into the passenger seat and shaking his head like yeesh as he pulls away.
This window seat set-up isn’t as comfortable as the one in the living room but I am rewarded for my sacrifice by being able to juuust see the guy who drove into the ambulance. He’s been leaning against the trunk of his car for ages now, arms folded, looking as composed as a person can look while wearing jhorts and it’s now nearly 4 in the morning and he’s just crashed into a stationary ambulance positively covered with strobing lights. Finally, he is turned around and handcuffed and led to a cruiser. There is more extensive standing around and talking and a few more cop/official-looking cars show up, more people to walk around to the back of the ambulance and look at whatever dents there are in the bumper, a sparkle of broken glass glinting in the streetlights. Finally, all but a couple of the cop cars disperse and then there is some complicated maneuvering that needs to be done to the car that ran into the bus which involves a cop getting in and driving it up and then reversing back down 8th Avenue with the driver’s side door left wide open and one leg casually dangling out which absolutely looked super cool until he turned the steering wheel slightly and the door started to swing closed on him and he had to jerk his leg in really fast.
I am reminded of the time the cops locked the keys in their clown car in almost the exact same spot and I wonder if any of the cops remember that, too, and are standing around trading stories about the dumbest thing they’ve ever seen happen on this particular corner as it does seem to be a bit of a magnet for trouble. That triggers another memory: it was this same intersection where I saw a car turning right onto 8th actually hit a pedestrian, not super hard but definitely hard enough to knock her down, but I guess the woman was so embarrassed (??) that she’d been obliviously looking at her phone that even though she had the light she just got up and shook herself off and darted away and the driver hesitated for like three seconds before s/he must have just shrugged and been like, Okay, whatever, and drove on.
It’s after 4 now and while a little bit I want to wait for the tow truck to come just to see this through to completion, just about every cop who’s made a stop at this scene has walked around to the back of the ambulance to take a gander at the damage and then, casually, sometimes not even looking, walked out into the traffic lanes on 8th Avenue to rejoin the scrum further up the block. If some dope can manage to run directly into a parked ambulance, flashing lights and all, I assume it would be even easier to rubberneck at that situation and accidentally pick off somebody dressed in dark navy moving through the shadow alongside that ambulance and for the love of pete, cops, consider reflective vests and/or using the sidewalk, I have seen enough for one night.
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