Out the corner of my eye I saw her face; a light, fleshy oval. The same time, I noticed the bus driver in his mirror. He was kindly waiting for me to take a seat. The green light at the intersection ahead beckoned us to hurry, so I immediately sat and we  got through the light okay. Relieved, and happy to be aboard, I settled back for the twenty minute trip to the ferry landing.

The young woman sat one seat up and across the aisle. She had laid her head against the window as if she were napping. I travel by bus around the Puget Sound a lot, and usually see nothing unusual about napping. She had on blue jeans, tennis shoes, and, considering the chill of the day, a less than adequate pullover. She was out of shape and a little pudgy. Blond hair came in and out of a rubber band at the back of her head, with only an inch or so to spare.

The neighborhoods of Lynnwood passed by out our windows. Then, after a long traffic light, those of Mukilteo. They are baby cities that were lying in the bassinet of forest in the midst of autumn.  There was a chance of rain during the afternoon. The ferries to the island run every half hour. ‘We will miss one,’ I thought. ‘But with a little luck, we will catch the next’.

She changed position. She sat up and plopped forward while placing her hands and forehead on top of the seat back that was in front of her.  She was not feeling well. If she appeared she was about to vomit, my plan would be to immediately move farther back on the bus, and, when the time came, I would exit through the rear door. Abruptly, she lifted her head and twisted her torso around to face me. Her eyes did not zero in. Instead, she looked at everything in general, as a sleepy kid would. I supposed I was within her spectrum of vision, nevertheless, and I don’t know where I got the idea she was requesting assistance, but I rose and moved toward her. “Are you alright?” I asked. My hand had landed on her shoulder.

She said something or other, seemingly to the negative.

“I will go tell the driver.”

I walked forward and told the driver there was a woman having a problem, and as I turned to implicate who it was, I saw that she had left her seat and was hurrying down the aisle toward us.  She arrived announcing that she was going to be sick.

I stepped aside and she slipped by me, as the driver swung the bus to the curb. The doors flopped open. She stood in the entry and noisily retched and gagged and coughed and spit. Meanwhile, I moved back to sit down. It was not in my original place.  Rattled, I ended up sitting a couple of seats forward from where I had been.

She had finished and had sat, sad sack, onto one of the seats in front. The driver was speaking to her. He pointed to the litter depository. It was a small Rubbermaid with a liner tidily lapping over its rim. He asked where she was bound for. The ferry landing. The island, she said. He asked if she would be alright if we went on, less than two miles to go. He could call an aid vehicle, if she thought she needed medical help. She continued to give co-operative responses She slumped, wiping her mouth with the back of her trembling hand. No. Go on. She would be okay.

There were two other passengers on this bus. One, a woman returning from a shopping trip, sat across from the sick woman, observing her contemplatively. And a long haired man sat immediately in front of me. He had been reading a book when the incident began, and he still had the book in hand, up and in position to be read, though he hadn’t looked at it for a good five minutes.

We continued without further delay. We were met just above Mukilteo by a string of vehicles, indicating that the ferry had docked and was unloading. We were on time. There was no doubt, I’d be on board when it left again for the island. The big bus swung in and stopped. All the doors opened and the four of us got off and began walking towards the ferry terminal. Island bound cars were loading. The long haired man lit a smoke and its cloud came over his shoulder and into my face. I looked around the terminal area for the sick woman. Here she came, up some concrete steps. She was hunched over a little, her head hung slightly off kilter, her eyes gazing at the ground five feet in front of her, but I thought she was going to make it. Right off, though, at top of the stairs, she staggered  sideways.  I approached her.

“Are you going to make it, Lady?” I asked, trying to sound ironically affectionate.

She spun my way, again, looking around me, through me.

“I need help,”she said.

“Do you need medical help?”

I took her response to be affirmative. She was hesitant. Who wants to call in the health cops on herself, right? It opens up a whole new set of problems. Anyway, she was surrendering right then. Maybe I or someone else could help her to begin to untangle things. Maybe she was giving up on keeping a little secret she had.  Her hands waved apart in a gesture that said, ‘Okay, no more trouble’. She softly cried, confidingly to me, “My mind is coming apart!”

At the ticket window, a woman inside was counting paper stubs. When I told her there was a  woman with a medical problem, she asked if an aid vehicle needed to be called. I said yes, and I turned to point out the woman that needed help. She had moved, gone over to lean against a rail. All we could see of her was her insufficiently clad dumpling shape and the top of her head.

“Have her sit down,” the agent said. Then she yelled. “Angeline! Get that woman to sit down.”

Angeline was happening by, from her station where she was in charge of the gate that lets foot traffic pass to and from the ferry. She was dressed in the bulky, highly reflective clothing worn by mariners who work around a lot of traffic. Angeline didn’t hear and continued on. The agent repeated it to me. Please, have her sit down.

I went over and got the young woman’s attention. There was  a bench along the terminal wall. We worked our way there and I told her to sit. She complied without hesitation.  Angeline arrived. She had been briefed on the situation. We stood over the woman. I figured Angeline would take over, now that the ferry was about to leave, so I reported to her what I knew. I said I came in on the same bus as this woman and she got sick along the way. We stopped for her, and afterward, her body was shaking. What she had told me, about her mind coming apart, that, she’d need to explain herself.   I leaned in and wished her luck. She was glum. I might just as well have wished Angeline good luck. I walked away.

Before I entered the building where the turnstile, the point of no return, set waiting, I stopped to look back. Maybe I should stay. The ferry people have their own duties. I could sit with her a few minutes, until the ambulance arrives. But on the other hand, I really had seen enough of her suffering, and I could not do her any real good. All I wanted was to go and be at home. The ticket agent had left her office to go and stand next to Angeline. She is tall and she wore the blue service uniform of a Washington State Ferry worker. They looked down at the woman slumped on the bench. Then the tall one glanced up and spotted me. We looked at each other a second. Was she wondering how I was involved with this woman’s problem? Did I own this situation? No, I did not own the situation, I decided.

I entered the empty terminal and paid my way through the turnstile.  Most of the foot passengers had boarded the boat earlier, just after the mainland direction load of cars exited. I was standing in a small outdoor area, next to a man, a white collar, on his way home from work. I could not see the women, but I began hear that around the corner of the building conditions had worsened. There were loud gasping, panting sounds, and with every desperate attempt to catch her breath, she gave out a yelp. She would have been screaming had she more air. Clearly, it was misery. I thought maybe it was a panic attack. They might have been assuring her that there would be a aid car arriving at any moment.

“She might be having a heart attack,” I said out loud, to the man next to me. He looked my way. He appeared not to be interested. “That woman,” I continued, in explanation. “I rode in on the bus with her. Along the way she became very ill.”

The bus driver should have called an emergency aid car,” he said.

“But he couldn’t have known how bad she would get.”

“He offered.” The voice came from just behind us. It was the long haired reader. He said, “But she declined. And that’s all he is required to do.”

Angeline appeared then and opened the gate to allow us through. She did not say, “You may board now” or “Have a nice day”, as the gate keepers often do. She just opened the gate and the three us of began our walk for the boat.