The possibility of a quiet death on the Northern Line

Like any of us I sometimes find the Tube an endurance, and yet other times I can feel something reassuring about the normalness of the Tube, unless it's steaming hot and the rush hour. It was neither, though it was warm ten days ago as I was wandering up the platform in the usual mindless daze.

I came up to one of those bench seats with spaces for four people, divided by arm-rests; there was an elderly woman bending over an equally elderly chap. He had his head right back and his eyes closed. She was talking to him quietly, calling him "Bill." He was not answering. At all.

I sat down just along from them and decided to watch closely and wait to see if anything needed to be done to help. I thought he didn't look too good. A little clammy and grey around the mouth. Just as I said "Is he alright?" or something equally inane, a man came up in the uniform of one of the mainline train companies, rather more noisily efficient than me. He asked "does he need an ambulance?" "No, no, he's just feeling a little faint," she said. H'm, I was thinking, he looks more than a bit faint to me, so...

Then up came a young woman, introduced herself as someone who'd done some first-aid, and joined in the enquiries, by which time Railman had called up a Tube employee. Whilst this was going on, the elderly woman had given Bill a couple of squirts of some medicine under his tongue. No immediate effect, and she carried on trying to talk to him, telling him he'd be OK if they could get him up into some fresh air. Still no response.

Railman and Ms FirstAid agreed that they should help him get on his feet and up to the great outdoors. But Mrs Bill had already told us that he had a heart condition and a stent....

Somewhere in the morass of unconnected stuff I refer to as a memory, something went ting-a-ling. I told them I knew almost nothing about first aid, but that I didn't think they should get him on his feet, if he was having heart trouble. They conceded. Just as well, because at that point Bill began to slip gently sideways ....

We helped him down so he could lie on the platform. I was holding his head - frizzy old grey hair under my hands, an unfamiliar head, a strange and delicate little burden - and I slid my rolled-up cagoule underneath it and settled him back.

He looked marginally less ill. Railman asked Tubeman if he'd actually phoned for an ambulance - I've noticed once or twice before how people sometimes dither about that - and Tubeman double-checked that one was on its way.

Next on the scene was an off-duty policewoman, properly-trained in first aid, so we made him a little more comfortable and she took over the lead role in this little drama. He was beginning to talk a little, very quietly. When the officer asked him what his name was, he answered "William." I liked that. "Bill" was reserved for friends and wives, not strangers bending over him on the Northern Line. The old chap was still with us.

The paramedic, when he came, was excellent - huge bloke, calm, confident, all you'd hope. He checked pulse and blood pressure, asked about the medication she'd squirted under his tongue. Poor old thing, she'd given him too much of it, and it had lowered his blood pressure too quickly, hence the sideways topple. So she fretted about that. But, said the paramedic, he'd be OK, he just needed to lie where he was till his BP rose. They'd take him in just to check him over, but his heart was OK.

Our little group began to drift off. I waited until the paramedic had put a better cushion under the gentleman's head so I could retrieve my cagoule, said cheerio to the excessively grateful lady and hopped on the the next Tube. (My aim in such situations is to do what one can, and then clear off quietly rather than add to the general fuss; but I must admit to a little private vanity over having got it right about not trying to get him to his feet.)

When I squatted by William, holding his head, I was wondering why I wasn't alarmed - it was potentially a scary situation, and I'm not generally Ms Coolcumber. He might have been dying, for all any of us knew. What actually came over me was a huge sense of calm and order. I'd heard the lady tell us that he was 83, so part of the feeling was about an elderly gentleman who'd lived a good long life already. I suppose I'd have felt differently were I holding a child's head. But part of it was acceptance. Either William will come through, or he will die here on the Northern Line platform. Not your first choice of a death-bed, perhaps, but - can't explain this - it seemed OK. We were all trying to care for him. The closest person to him in his life was with him. It was OK. Life or death, A or B. Can't do more, come what may.

Of course, it wasn't me or mine who were in danger of departing this life on a Tube platform, and there was no blood, drama or big trauma to challenge us, but it was unexpected for me to feel somehow calmed by this close proximity to at least the possibility of death.

I hope and asume William shook off his fainting fit and is perhaps sitting in his armchair reading a good book, with a little glass of malt by his elbow. He hadn't, I think, actually been close to death, he had just looked as though he was. If I could, I'd thank him for the privilege of being with him and learning some more things about mortality, the fragility of life, acceptance, my own characteristic responses - and what to do if someone keels over on the Northern Line.
Provided you have that most uncool and unLondon of garments with you - a cagoul.

It is possible to be struck by a meteor or a single-engine plane while reading in a chair at home. Pedestrians are flattened by safes falling from rooftops mostly within the panels of the comics, but still, we know it is possible, as well as the flash of summer lightning, the thermos toppling over, spilling out on the grass. And we know the message can be delivered from within. The heart, no valentine, decides to quit after lunch, the power shut off like a switch, or a tiny dark ship is unmoored into the flow of the body's rivers, the brain a monastery, defenceless on the shore. This is what I think about when I shovel compost into a wheelbarrow, and when I fill the long flower-boxes then press into rows the limp roots of red impatiens -- the instant hand of Death always ready to burst forth from the sleeve of his voluminous cloak. Then the soil is full of marvels, bits of leaf like flakes off a fresco, red-brown pine needles, a beetle quick to burrow back under the loam. Then the wheelbarrow is a wilder blue, the clouds a brighter white, and all I hear is the rasp of the steel edge against a round stone, the small plants singing with lifted faces, and the click of the sundial as one hour sweeps into the next.

Billy Collins

Maybe that was it. Maybe Euston looked a little more marvel-filled, post-William....