They saved her life. There were no two ways about it. For there Rachel had been, caught between the doors of the metro in such a way that the jaws of life would have been needed to pry her out were it not for their intervention. Before which she was flailing around like a goddamn crab that had been overturned on its back. Rachel had seen it happen to others so many times before, always inwardly remarking to herself that it could never happen to her. She’d think, You’d have to be reckless or retarded or both to find yourself like that. Yet here she was, in exactly the same position she said she never would be. How had it happened? How had she let herself get into such a vulnerable state? The kind of state that forced her to rely on other people—a nightmare scenario for Rachel. Now come to life.

More uncanny still was the fact that she rarely, if ever, wore a backpack. Yet today, she had foolishly opted to replace her usual handbag with this wretched substitute, thus being reminded of yet another extremely legitimate reason why she abhorred backpacks in the first place. They were liabilities, destined to get you caught in booby traps you otherwise wouldn’t. Oh sure, when you had a lot to carry around (which, as a matter of fact, she did on this particular day), they were more “comfortable.” Or as comfortable as one could feel in the form of a human donkey, carting around so much shit on their back. But Rachel was feeling more uncomfortable and frightened than she ever had in recent memory. And that was all because of this backpack. The beat-up black one with no brand name on it, only the words, “Not Your Bitch” scrawled across it in a pink girly font.

She had been in possession of this backpack since high school, when it was still actually “chic” to wear a backpack. Now, the students she saw carried around “normal” bags (that is, if one considered expensive designer bags like Longchamp “normal”), slung over their shoulders as if they were going somewhere more “adult.” Like to an actual job or to run an errand. So for her to deign to revert to a dated version of what it once meant to look like a student only added to the current sense of humiliation Rachel was feeling.

“Luckily,” she supposed, the humiliation was outweighed in that moment by the fear that either 1) her backpack, ergo all of her personal effects, including her wallet with ID and debit/credit cards inside of it, would be ripped from her back as the train whisked away or 2) the train would whisk her and the backpack away, causing her certain demise in the process. Neither scenario was ideal, though the second one was probably worse—even if she did often fantasize about death as the ultimate get out of jail free card. Part of this “fantasy” (though that word would be deemed by many as far too “crass” to describe a desire for death) stemmed from her general contempt for humanity. She had little faith in the lot, nor did she ever find it easy to forge much of a bond with “them.” Because, yes, Rachel did make the mistake of viewing herself through the lens of someone who was “separate” from the rest of humanity. Which did her a major disservice in terms of coming across as anything like “approachable” or “relatable.” Even so, she often wondered why it was so hard for her to make connections with people—hence, her glaring lack of friendships.

Maybe that’s why she had been so discombobulated today as well. She actually had an “appointment” with a friend. Or would-be friend, really. Someone who was an acquaintance that she hoped could graduate to a friend. As such, she started panicking when she realized she had boarded the train on the opposite side of the track she needed to be on, and that if she stayed on it, she would be very late. Thus, her rash decision to jump off just as the doors were about to close. Bringing her to this state of thrashing and public embarrassment that led some kind pair of souls to work together to jointly push the doors open and wrest her from the train’s control. Before she could think, she was safely “shat out” onto the platform just as the train pulled away, having already made its rigmarole of “urgent” and “get the fuck out of here” noises when it felt a “foreign object”—Rachel—obstructing one of its entryways.

Rachel had no time to fully turn around and see who had saved her, let alone enough time to properly thank them for truly sparing her life with their random act of kindness. And it made her feel shame to know that, had she been in a position to save someone in that way—as she had been so many times before—she wouldn’t have done so. Instead, she would have left it to someone else, presumed another passenger would just “handle it.” But that wasn’t always the case. What’s more, to believe that it was could lead to the unnecessary demise of another human being.

Standing in stunned shock on the platform for at least a full three minutes after she was ejected—shoved out—Rachel did something she didn’t think she’d ever done before. She wished those strangers well. For all she knew, they could have been horrible people apart from this one incident of goodwill, but that was no matter to her. They had done something she could never repay them for—would never be able to repay them for. Not just because she had no idea what they looked like (and they probably didn’t get much of a good look at her either, having only seen her back), but because they had given her not only a second chance, but a new perspective.

Rachel wouldn’t have gone so far as to say her entire worldview was changed, but she did suddenly have a new appreciation for humanity that wasn’t there before. Because she had never experienced something so genuine and pure from people she didn’t even know, and would never see again. Had never witnessed, firsthand, the inherent goodness in others. And their desire to help their fellow human survive and succeed. Or succeed at surviving, at least.

As Rachel started walking toward the stairs that would lead her to correct side of the platform, her sense of relief was quickly outshined by a sense of guilt. Guilt over having, for all this time, been so hateful toward people. And just as she could feel her heart growing a size (not three sizes like the Grinch, mind you), she looked over to her left and saw a man grinning at her with a sinister air just before he spit right in her face. He didn’t seem to be homeless or deranged, but apparently, he was one or both of those things (the two words so often going hand in hand, sooner or later). Because Rachel couldn’t have otherwise explained such an occurrence. Unless, her briefly-dormant-but-now-wide-awake misanthropy reminded her, he’s just another piece of shit like all the rest of them.

That re-found revelation was all it took for Rachel to stop in her tracks and actually wait for the same train she had made such a hard-won effort to escape. This done so she could return home and avoid meeting her acquaintance altogether. The acquaintance she now held personally responsible for this entire snafu since, if Rachel hadn’t been rushing to be on time, she would have just waited it out on the wrong train until the next stop and never risked life and limb for someone she didn’t even consider a friend.