Genesis

Chapter 17

May 9th

6:45 A.M.

It was hard for Madison to remember how cold it had been during the winter on her three-minute walk from her apartment on 73rd Street to the subway entrance in Verdi Square. Now that spring had truly sprung, it was a pleasure to be outside to smell the fresh morning air, even in the middle of the city, and hear the birds sing, especially in the tiny park’s trees. Only a month and a half previously it had been so cold and raw one morning, with a mixture of snow and rain, that she had been willing to call a rideshare. She only did that on average of once a month during January and February.

Her normal route, which she had been doing twice a day since September, was to take the number 2 or 3 express train down to 42nd Street, transfer to the number 7 that took her to Grand Central, and then hop on the Lexington Avenue 6 line down to 33rd Street and Park Avenue. From there it was a pleasant twelve-minute walk in decent weather to the hospital. Despite having to take three trains, the whole trip was usually a bit less than a half hour door-to-door provided there were no train delays.

When she had first arrived in the city from St. Louis, she’d been intimidated by the subway. It seemed like such a scary netherworld, often filled with unpleasant smells, occasional random ear-splitting screeches of metal against metal, and strange-looking people that ran the gamut from the well-dressed to the apparent homeless. But over the months she’d become immune, and now she hardly batted an eye at the varying cavalcade of people she encountered. And like so many travelers, she could read one of her professional journals on her phone if she felt motivated to better herself, or the Daily News if she didn’t. That morning she’d brought a spiral notebook she’d filled with her genealogy notes over the previous two years. Madison’s method of studying was to write things down. Once she did, it was generally committed to memory. If she wanted to review, like in her present circumstance, the notes served as a superb way of doing so.

When she reached the subway entrance, an architecturally interesting head house in Verdi Square, she girded herself for the general subway smell. It wasn’t particularly unpleasant, just unique. As usual, she had plenty of company as millions of New Yorkers relied on the subway to commute to their places of work. It gave Madison a sense of belonging to a grand, common enterprise.

With her monthly pass, going through the turnstile was a breeze, and she was soon on the relatively narrow southbound platform with a sizable crowd of other people all waiting for the arrival of the next train. The tracks for the local were on the left, the express on the right. When she’d first started using the subway, she’d stayed far away from the edge of the platform, which to her was like the edge of a dangerous precipice. She didn’t like looking down at the dark tracks, frequently covered with litter and other filth, and what was called the third rail, which was electrified to run the train. It was even scarier being close to the edge when the subway burst out of the tunnel and came thundering in with a crescendo of deep-bass rumbling, like a mini-earthquake. The trains’ arrivals were even accompanied by a sudden blast of wind and an uptick of the trademark subway smell. Now inured to the whole experience, she flipped open her notebook to review the first few chapters of Bettinger’s book. She was concentrating enough that she didn’t look up as the first train came barreling into the station. It wasn’t until she heard the doors open that she raised her eyes. She could take either the 2 or the 3 express. This was the 2, so she boarded.

As was invariably the case, the train was crowded and there were no seats available. But it wasn’t unexpected. Instead of sitting she stood, like she usually did, finding a convenient pole to grasp. Soon the doors slid closed and with several repetitive lurches the train pulled out of the station and picked up speed. Like so many mornings, she was on her way.

As she headed south at what seemed like a breakneck speed, she again tried to read her notebook, but the shaking and lurching made it so difficult she quickly gave up. Instead she closed her eyes and once again thought about how terrible a day yesterday had been until it had been partially salvaged by the nightcap in Nobu with the unusual Aria Nichols.

Ever since Madison had awakened an hour earlier, she’d marveled at the personality of the medical examiner. Although Madison had been initially put off by her bluntness, self-centeredness, and apparent lack of social graces, she’d learned to think of her as a unique and interesting individual. She’d also come to realize how remarkably committed Aria was to finding the man with whom Kera had been having an affair, a quest that Madison had come to share. The more Madison had thought about it, the greater the redemptive power such a discovery would have for her. It had become progressively clear to Madison that she had taken Kera’s unavailability much too personally and, as a result, hadn’t been the friend she should have been. If she had, maybe Kera would be alive today.

The moment the train stopped at the 42nd Street station, which was the busiest in the entire NYC subway system, Madison and a good portion of the train’s occupants rushed to get off. She was then part of a surge of people who power walked, almost raced, to catch their various connections. For Madison her goal was the platform for the 7 train heading east out to Main Street, Queens. It was two levels below, taking her deeper into the earth. When she arrived, she was slightly out of breath. It was a type of herd mentality that made everybody rush.

Madison moved down the platform by weaving among the people waiting. From having done the commute so many times, she knew which car of the 7 train would deposit her in the most convenient position for getting to the next platform for the final leg on the 6 train. At one point as she headed east, she managed to get close enough to the platform’s edge to look back into the subway tunnel to see if she could see the distant light of an approaching train. But the tunnel was dark, so she continued on. When she got to the proper spot, she stopped and went back to reading her notebook. Most other people were fussing with their phones. Those who weren’t just stared off with blank faces. Only a few people talked. Riding the NYC subway was not a social exercise.

For the east-bound 7 train, the 42nd Street station was the first stop, so the train was often not full, and on this particular morning, Madison got a seat. So, on this second segment, which was only two stops, she was able to do a bit more reading. It was becoming clearer to her exactly how she and Aria were going to go about finding Kera’s lover. First, she would get kits for both the fetus and Kera from a number of the commercial DNA companies, maybe even all four of the main ones. To do that she needed samples from Aria. Her plan was to contact the companies to find out what kind of samples would be best. Getting those kits from mother and child was step one in whatever path ultimately was to be taken to find ancestral matches. While waiting for the kits, Madison planned on contacting the many websites set up to help adoptees find their natural parents, and even more apropos, she would reach out to those websites set up to help people who were conceived with donor sperm. In a very real sense, finding the identity of a sperm donor was the same situation she and Aria faced with Kera’s lover. After all, most sperm donors expected anonymity, just as Kera’s lover apparently did.

Madison got off at Grand Central 42nd Street station and once more joined the crowded race to make the next connection. Part of the reason for rushing was to try to avoid the situation where the connecting train would be just leaving the station. It had happened to Madison all too often, sometimes as much as once a week. For Madison the worst part of the journey was waiting for the train to arrive here at the Lexington Avenue subway line, as it could become unpleasantly crowded.

As she quickly ascended the final flight of stairs to reach the proper platform, she was relieved to see that there was no train with its doors about to close in her face. In response she slowed her ascent to a more normal pace. Other people around her did the same. Gaining the platform, she moved to the left. Over the months she’d found that the rear of the train always seemed slightly less crowded. Like on the first train, on this leg of her journey she rarely got to sit down.

Reaching what she considered to be an appropriate spot to wait, she opened her notebook yet again. She wanted to reread what she had written about GEDmatch’s latest tools for maximizing matches yet still keeping false positives to a minimum. From sore experience Madison knew that false positives were a bane to genealogists. They used up time and effort and had no redeeming qualities whatsoever. She’d been down that road far too many times.

With such interesting reading, Madison’s sense of the passage of time was suppressed, but after a while, it suddenly occurred to her that she was still standing on the platform, waiting for the local 6 train. Glancing up from her notebook, she could tell that the crowd had significantly swelled on the platform from when she had arrived. That was what always happened when trains were running late.

Pulling out her phone, she checked the time. It was already almost twenty past seven, the time she usually was walking into the Hassenfeld Children’s Hospital, meaning she’d been standing there reading for fifteen to twenty minutes. Repocketing her phone, she could see that the commuters standing near her were all becoming restless like herself.

Madison did not want to be late after missing half of the previous day, some of whose patients had been rescheduled to be squeezed into that morning. With no countdown clock in view from where she was standing, she cocked her head and tried to listen for an oncoming train. She couldn’t hear one. Instead she moved forward, between other standees and approached the edge of the platform. Still keeping back from the yellow line painted on the very edge, she leaned forward out over the tracks and looked to the right into the subway tunnel that was relatively close to her. She could see that the tracks made a curve to the right, limiting how far she could see into the darkness. There were only a few distant, tiny points of light at intervals along the wall. It was at that very moment that she did see the headlights of an approaching train. A second later she could hear and feel the distant earth-shaking rumble followed by a sudden gust of wind being pushed out of the tunnel. Mesmerized for a moment by the thunderous approach as the black silhouette of the train grew in size, Madison continued to watch. As the 360-ton behemoth rapidly neared the tunnel opening, Madison leaned away and was about to step back when something suddenly pushed her violently forward. Completely off balance, she frantically flailed her arms, sending her notebook flying, but there was no way she could keep her footing as she was catapulted out over the tracks. An instant later, to the collective gasp of the crowd, the huge train shot into the station with a tremendous screech as the emergency brakes were applied but far too late. It took almost a minute for the train to come to an abrupt halt half-in and half-out of the tunnel. Madison Bryant was nowhere to be seen. A few of the people waiting on the platform screamed. Several others who had witnessed the shameless event yelled at a heavyset, dark-haired, and bearded man in a shabby overcoat whom they had seen push Madison in front of the oncoming train. They shouted for him to stop, but the homeless-appearing man ran up the stairs and quickly disappeared in the packed concourse. Others frantically dialed 911 even though the traumatized train’s engineer had already reported the incident and Emergency Services were being dispatched. The trick now was to get the body out from under the middle of the train.