Trimess

Tuesday, October 5, 2021

Another Novella from the TriMet Bridge City Bus Driver

 The Original post is HERE

I posted a story a couple weeks ago about something really scary that happened. I haven’t read it since, as I have been afraid that it will bring up all of the feelings again. I’m going to copy and paste it now (and read it for the first time since), as it was deleted for lack of a case number. Something that I am thankful for, as I wasn’t ready to relive this situation just yet with a bunch of strangers.

For the mods, the incident number is PP260933. And the responding officers were Joshua Nyone and Shawn Scott[first name may be misspelled].

Being in charge of a hijacked bus and taken hostage, plus missed connections….it’s a true Portland tale.

So this is a tale that I never wanted to ever have to share. But here I am. The scariest moment in my life, up until now.

TLDR: it’s not gonna happen. I don’t even know where this story is going to end right now, so you’ve gotta read every fucking thing. Sorry, my friend.

Edit: I just reread this and realized that I’m still in that post-adrenaline mania. So I apologize for the long-windedness. Apologizing is a lot easier than trying to edit all that shit out. Cheers!

My birthday last year was spent driving back from the coast when our skies were so red it looked like an apocalyptic video game. We had spent the last several days camping on BLM land and without service to the rest of the world. Our tent and poop bucket was erected right under a “deadly tree” (yeah, we are optimists). Thankfully we ventured into Roseburg for some produce and realized that we needed to head indoors for the foreseeable future. We actually spent that evening getting as drunk as we could in Newport and then paying some stranger $20 to drive us up the hill to our hotel. Thanks, Seth. You and your hoarder Subaru were the best!

So this year I spent my birthday with good friends celebrating their multi-hundreds-of-thousands-of-dollars housewarming party. It wasn’t what I wanted to do, but we support our friends, right? I can bet that one of those friends reads this and they have no idea that I am BridgeCityBus. That’s a really good possibility, knowing my friends.

(9/11 birthday! I turned 18 that day, so my childhood and adulthood has been so precisely separated by this date.)

I also spent that birthday driving the 2 and I put out an actual fire at a bus stop. My inner monologue became, “who needs candles when you can put out an actual fire?” Yeah, it was exciting.

This is the story of the week after my birthday, that so happens to me by ex-husband’s birthday, September 18th.

Anyways…. I feel like I need to give you an outline if you’ve gotten this far. It’s going to be a long-ass story and I have a lot to tell. So here’s the outline:

Dude uses words to hijack bus.

I stop and dude tells everyone not to leave.

Me, and those who don’t leave (and stay in solidarity with me), spend a grueling 13 minutes with this crazy dude waiting for police.

At 12 minutes I lose my shit, yell and sob and beg. Cops finally show up and dude gets off my bus. Cops don’t say one word to me, or ask me any questions. [editors note: they did talk to me—what they said was “you may want to close your doors so he doesn’t get back on.” That’s about all I remember them saying to me. No follow up, no chance to debrief what just happened. Just that.]

We all have a good little survival party and I get ice cream and get one side of a missed connection story. Andre, if you’re reading this, you were my lifesaver that day!! You’re fucking awesome and I hope to see you again!

Okay…. So here is the long-winded fucking story with every detail that I can remember:

So I was driving the 2 to Gresham on Saturday. I wasn’t expecting much to happen, since the last Saturday I put out an actual fire on the side of the road. It was the 3rd time I’ve used a fire extinguisher this summer. It was my birthday, too, so I just assumed that that was my ultimate birthday candle that someone had left on SE Division and 87th. May as well hope for the best, right?

Anyway, I am just driving 30 mph east on Division, and some guy walks past both yellow lines (you know we have a ‘new’ yellow line, right? If not, please get familiar with it!) and he very assertively tells me, “Don’t stop the bus! Keep driving!”

I, of course, begin looking for any hazards. Is he asking me to stop because people are running after the bus? No. Am I by a bus stop and there is someone that I shouldn’t board? No. I am not by any bus stop. Nothing out of the ordinary is happening, other than this guy barking orders at me.

So I find a safe place to pull over and I stop and open my doors. My thinking at the time is, “If this bus is getting hijacked, I will at least give an opportunity to folks who want to get off.”

A few folks did just that. I remember one guy saying something like, “I’m not sticking around for this shit,” and bouncing out the back door. He wasn’t the only one. I wish I could have joined him.

So the bus was stopped and the doors were open. Angry Dude (we will call him ‘AD’ from here on out) confronted me about why I stopped and turned and told everyone on the bus, “Don’t get off the bus!” I later learned that at this point, he body blocked a woman and her teenage daughter from leaving out the back door.

The words that he decided to use in this moment had me and everyone remaining on the bus in fucking high gear for survival.

He asked me why I wasn’t moving. As I was keying in messages to dispatch, I told him that I did not feel safe with him on the bus and that I needed him to get off. This entire time, I’m looking him up and down and waiting for a weapon to come out.

I must note here that this guy was tatted from his face down to his ankles. He has an “LA” tat on one of his calves and he was dressed in all loose, black clothing. While driving the bus, I don’t really ever care what you look like. I will say “good morning” and “thank you” to everyone and I trust you to be copacetic until you prove me wrong. Portland is full of the weird and reformed (or unreformed), and I am willing to serve everyone. As long as you’re cool with me and your other bus mates, I’ll get you to where you’re going. I don’t even care about fare anymore. Just be a kind human.

So I get ahold of Dispatch (I’m gonna try to link the calls below). I play it as cool as I can. They tell me that police are on their way and I just assume it’s lights and sirens. So I tell them that I’m “good” for now. They offer to stay on the line with me, but AD is standing right over me and almost mocking what I’m saying. So the best that I think I can do is say, “Great, police are on their way.”

In retrospect (and it always is), I probably should have been up front with Dispatch as far as what he said, or I should have hit the silent alarm to speed the response up. In my head, I was trying to stay as calm as I could until the police showed, hoping it would be within minutes.

Well, it took 13 minutes. In those 13 minutes….

My follower showed up. I made an announcement to my current passengers that if they needed to get home, I would wave that bus down so that they could keep moving. Mama Bear (the woman who was body blocked earlier at the back door with her teenage daughter), stated loudly, “You’re scaring the driver! I will not leave her on the bus with you alone!” No one moved. They all stood in solidarity with me. All 6 of them.

AD continued to argue with each individual on my bus including myself. At this point, I didn’t really think that he understood the impact of his first words to me and the passengers, but his behavior was still very unpredictable and I had to assume that he may have weapon.

I also worried that maybe another passenger had a weapon and that things may get out of hand within seconds.

My follower passed me up and I waved him down, giving my passengers a second chance to jump board. It was after 6pm and I’m sure everyone wanted to get home. They didn’t want to leave my side. But in the meantime, I got a few words off at coworker. Something like, “Police are on their way. I’m good. My passengers won’t leave me alone with him.”

For some reason this just triggered the tears. Everything between the brim of my hat and the top of my mask was wet and streaming. The deep breaths came and I could not hold them.

The 12 minutes of looking for a weapon and thinking of the worst just hit its climax and I lost it.

“GET THE FUCK OFF MY BUS RIGHT NOW! GET OFF! GET OFF THE FUCKING BUS!! DO YOU KNOW WHAT WE HAVE TO DEAL WITH ON A DAILY BASIS?! I HAVE COWORKERS WHO HAVE HAVE BEEN SHOT AND STABBED AND BEING SPIT ON IS A NORMAL THING. RIGHT NOW YOU ARE SCARING THE SHIT OUT OF ME AND EVERYONE HERE. WE DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU’RE GOING TO DO. JUST GET OFF THE BUS! PLEASE!”

At that point I was sobbing through my mask and just trying to plead with him to leave, while also knowing that I crossed the ultimate line of professionalism.

I was hitting more buttons for Dispatch, stuck on the idea that I would just call for “lights and sirens”.

As I was doing this, I watched a cop car mosey on up my way and put their lights on to make a u-turn to park behind me. Fucking finally! 13 minutes later.

AD must have seen them pull up, because he finally stepped off. (I also must note here that every “problem child” that I have had on the bus has disembarked before the cops showed up, with the exception of a couple really sleepy dudes. The aggressive ones always seem to make their way off the bus before cops are even called—so this was already unusual.)

As soon as AD gets off the bus, me and the 6 other passengers have a huge collective sigh of relief. I think the first words out of my mouth was, “That was so fucking strange. What the fuck?!”

We had a collective, awkward chuckle and then I said something like, “I quit smoking two days ago. What terrible timing!”

Mama Bear said, “Girl, I gotcha. I’ll smoke for you!” So I stepped off the bus with her and stretched my legs for what seemed like the first time in ages.

Mama told me that she doesn’t rely on transit, but she had just decided to take her daughter on the bus that day to mix things up. She told me that she had been raised in a rough environment and showed me the knife she keeps on her when she rides, joking about how her daughter asked her what it was for earlier.

Little does she know, her voice during those 13 minutes gave me the power and hope that I needed to get through it. I like to remember that we hugged each other at some point during the smoking session, but I can’t quite remember. I feel like I got a hug from her. She said something like, “I couldn’t do your job because of shit like this.” My response was, “people like you make it the best job ever.” And I mean that. 100%

I went back to my driver’s seat after talking to Mama Bear, and everyone was still there. I wish I had a better memory for faces and voices at that point, but I was totally consumed by adrenaline.

I do remember a sweet young gal offering me her pepper spray. She told me she had 7 more at home and that she always carried on the bus. I responded with, “no, I can’t carry any weapon, and pepper spray would be a bad idea on a bus.” I told her about how we have the phone handset as a weapon if we need it and that some old school drivers still have the punchers hanging off their belts.

Going back once again….As soon as AD got off the bus, there was one guy who was itching for food. He had sat there with all of us for a long, stressful moment when he could have just gotten the other bus and had been home by then. When the coast was clear, he hightailed it over to Dairy Queen, hoping to catch the next bus.

Well, with all of the hoopla and agitation, we forgot about the poor guy.

My road supervisor had already shown up and did her best to calm me down. I had my moment with Mama Bear and Pepper Spray Gal. We all had our moment to briefly debrief about this crazy thing that happened that none of us could really put a finger on.

My follower’s follower finally showed up and picked everyone else up…..except for Dairy Queen Dude.

Andre showed up 30 seconds after the bus left and he was defeated! He had a bag full of food and a large strawberry shake.

I joked and asked where my shake was. He pulled out a caramel sundae and handed it to me with a spoon, while telling my supervisor that I “did good”.

With my supervisor’s permission, I sat on the bus with Andre and ate my ice cream while on the clock. At that point in time, I should have been on my way home. But instead, I got to shoot the shit with this awesome guy that moved here a year ago from Louisiana.

He assured me that he got everything on video, “including you crying.” I begged him to cut out the part of me losing my shit if he decides to put it on YouTube. He assured me that wasn’t what it was for. It was “just in case shit got real.” I’m so glad it didn’t.

We both got to get that crazy moment off our chests, and he also told me that he has had a crush on Pepper Spray Gal for a while now, but doesn’t know how to approach her, because, “people who talk to people on the bus are weird, apparently.”

Pepper Spray Gal—if you’re reading this, give Andre a chance if you can. He seems like a solid dude. And Andre—thanks so much for being that friend when I needed one. And Mama Bear: I hope I can be as badass as you are someday. You are the fucking shit!

And to everyone else on my bus on Saturday: thank you for everything. And thank you for sticking with me and your fellow passengers in solidarity. It means more than you can ever know. You folks are the reason I decide to get up and go to work every day.

I’ve been super revved up and scared all weekend. I was driving the 30 earlier today, from Clackamas to Estacada. There is almost zero potential for any shit on that run, and that is the only reason I was able to show up today.

But one guy walked up right behind me to ask for a courtesy stop—nothing unusual—and I was left sweaty and scared for no reason.

I’ve got Monday and Tuesday off to work through this shit so I can be solid when I go back to work on Wednesday. I’m gonna do my best to be good to myself.

In the meantime, if you feel safe to back up your operator during these crazy, scary times, more power to you!! We can’t do our job without you level-headed folks. You mean the world to me. ❤️

So that was the post a while back. I wasn’t solid by the time Wednesday came and went. I just called in with an “open” day of return.

Since that day, I’ve had night terrors and panic attacks in weird, unusual situations. Like driving my own vehicle down the road. Or just sleeping next to my partner. He’s lucky that I sleep on the left side of the bed, sleep on my left side, and am right-handed. I have woken up too many times yelling “BACK THE FUCK UP!”, or, “GET AWAY FROM ME!”, as I punch across the bedroom with my right arm hard enough to make my shoulder hurt. It’s 3am at this point, and I can’t go back to sleep. So I make myself a cup of coffee and lay on the living room floor with my cat.

I spent the first three nights after driving the 30 on my living room floor. I didn’t shower for over 3 days (one of the reasons I slept on the floor). I didn’t realize until day 3 that this was a sign that I wasn’t coping.

I called CISM, TriMet’s Critical Incident Stress Management the morning after the incident, thanks to a fellow Redditor/Rail Op gal (thanks, u/Kellanium) who gave me their info. I reached out to the union rep for support. Unfortunately, I didn’t hear back from CISM until I left two messages and a complaint over three and a half days. The Union gal that I got in touch with, however well-meaning, was not useful, as she had never seemed to be through a similar incident and had never filed workers comp. Finally, a Union rep from CISM called me back and was able to give me the form number to fill out for workers compensation. This was the most helpful. More helpful than than dispatch. More helpful than the police who said one sentence to me. More helpful that my road supervisor that showed up and encouraged me to drive the bus back to the garage. And definitely more helpful than the station agent who basically shrugged off the trauma that I had endured, when I returned to the garage and unloaded on him.

My biggest grievance with this whole thing is that TriMet doesn’t have a built-in system to support us operators in time if trauma when we aren’t physically hurt and can’t point to the body part that was injured.

I could go on and on about this, but instead of putting my employer through the ringer, I’d like to propose that TriMet have one or two on-call staff for each garage that is able to respond to traumatic events and guide the operator through proper debriefing, as well as follow-up self care and anything else that is needed, like help with FMLA or Worker’s Comp.

In my time of need, Andre, a complete stranger, was the one who was able to give me that moment of debriefing and comfort that I needed. It wasn’t from TriMet, but it should have been. And it wasn’t from the police. And, honestly, I think that I could probably be back at work by now if things were handled better. But I’m not.

That night I called my partner from the sidewalk as I was waiting for the employee shuttle (I switched to Powell this signup and I regret it for many reasons). He offered me a moment to tell him what was up, but I defaulted to the “when I get home, I’ll tell you”. Well, when I got home, he had 20 minutes left of a movie (and he is NOT a movie watcher) to get through before he was ready to hear my story.

I told one of my sisters this and she freaked out! “He’s not making you a priority!”, etc. But at that moment, I realized that he has to protect himself from the secondary trauma that is my job. I come home all the time with some kind of story that makes him fear for my safety, probably more than I fear for my own safety. It’s just part of the job.

On one section of the “Report of Personal Injury or Occupational Illness”, I am asked to answer for: “Did working conditions cause or contribute to the accident/injury?”

I am turning this form in tomorrow and I have left it blank for now. I don’t know what to say. YES!!!! Working conditions have definitely contributed to my trauma. But nothing out of the ordinary happened. Just a case of crazy shit happening with the public. That’s what we do, right? That IS my working condition.

When I finally decided to go out and run an errand at Home Depot earlier this week, I stopped by the bar that I used to work at “on my way home”, and proceeded to drink endless vodka sodas until I got into a shouting match with a Proud Boy (my therapist applauds this, btw), and cried my way out of the bar. I know every single person at that bar (for real—not exaggerating), and I can sometimes blur the lines of the Public vs. My Living Room. So I exited with tears in my eyes and yelling “Fuck you!”’s to everyone. [There was no “you’re cool”, like in Half Baked. It was, unfortunately, all “fuck you”‘s.] Don’t worry, I got a ride home.

Thankfully, I had already made appointments with my doctor and my therapist, so the next morning I woke up with a goal of not being a fucking drunk asshole.

I have had, up until three nights ago, night terrors and panic attacks while in public (that drunken freak out was also probably a panic attack). I hadn’t been able to sleep for more than two hours or so before waking up in a panic and unable to go back to sleep.

Thanks to my doctor and therapist, I am on a coupling of medications for acute stress disorder/PTSD, to help with my fight or flight (or freeze, in my case) response at untimely moments of every day life and to help me actually sleep through the night.

These meds have lowered my blood pressure as well as my heartbeat, so the side effects have made me Mrs. Stoney Bologna. It was awfully bad timing, as my father-in-law recently passed, and I was visibly high for all of his services, from his Honors Interment to his own Viking Burial (he was a badass, btw).

And now I’m at home, waiting for that magical moment when I feel safe again. Due to Covid and my therapist’s schedule, she is booked out quite a bit. My doctor is also booked out pretty far. In the meantime, as soon as I stop feeling stoned, I really need to start being productive with my time.

I am not ready to go back to work just yet, even though I wish I was. Every time a bus drives past my home I get a hard knot in my stomach. I don’t like going to the grocery store by myself, as I feel unsafe. I can’t drive my own vehicle right now, as the side effects from my medication make it unsafe. But before the medication, I didn’t feel safe even driving my own Jeep around my neighborhood.

I do so wish that I could just buck up and move on. I know so many people who would have been able to better deal with my situation. They’d be solid today driving the 72 after midnight. I’m not.

One of my most favorite Union gals that I know told me that she “understands” because she is a marshmallow incased in concrete. My response to her was, “but you’ve got that concrete.”

I don’t have that concrete. I wish I did.

And that lack of concrete, I like to think, makes me a good bus operator. I look hard for the marshmallow in everyone. But it comes with a cost.

And that cost is being alone at home, sad and scared. I’m surrounded by well-meaning people who have never felt that their life was in danger. My family and I are separated by too many miles, and I am at a loss. I’m 38 years old and I’m grasping at how to put things back together. I feel like a failure because I am not yet back at work.

I’m so tired of angry, aggressive men. I feel like my life has been controlled by them. Over the years my boundaries have been shaped around them. This one incident brought up all of my past trauma with violent men and I am filled with so much anger and resentment because of that.

I’m just stuck. I want to wake up tomorrow with a plan for the week. I want to do something extraordinary since I won’t be working 9 1/2 to 10 hours a day. I need to find something that will make me happy and heal me or I need to find a way to be productive. I can’t just be sleeping on my living room floor with my cat, however inviting that is.

Please help.

Also, I saw something recently on Reddit that addressed double spaces after periods and Oxford Commas. Due to my lack of proper English education, I don’t know what an Oxford Comma is, but I have a feeling that I overuse commas and therefore use A LOT of Oxford commas. And I will always put two spaces after a period. WTH?! When did this change?!

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