HazMet

By Jim

The first warning comes from two rows in back of me. "We've got to stop! It's a biohazard!"

Huh? It's my bus pal Jackie, whom I see occasionally on the southbound No. 12 late at night, leaving downtown. We've just passed the Capitol Highway Safeway. She sounds the alarm again: "We've got to get a new bus. It's a biohazard."

Other riders stare at Jackie, then begin to look around, the first wave of panic, like a herd of wildebeests beginning to sense that lions are nearby. Attention turns toward the front of the bus, to a silent, still fellow with black hair, his head hung low.

He has just finished vomiting.

The bus slows. Riders cover their faces with garments as if they are air filters certified by the Centers for Disease Control. But the smell spreads quickly, a potent, bad blend of . . . fermented muskrat and spoiled deviled eggs? . . . of a garage freezer that lost power three months ago and the greasepit in a Portland food cart? This odor is surely not of the living world.

The No. 12 pulls to the curb and stops. Riders begin to move away from the contaminated man, who, strangely, just sits there blankly, surrounded by his own filth. Even Rosa Parks would have given up her seat and moved to the back of the bus.

"Really, it's a biohazard," Jackie reminds everybody, authoritatively.

The driver opens both sets of doors. A few people leave. I join them, bailing out the back. I think of my co-worker Bob. At exactly 10:30 p.m. I said to him, "Let's go, man."

"Naw, you go ahead," he said. "I've got a few things to do. I'm catching the 11:05."

"OK." And I jetted out of the building. I do whatever it takes to catch the next bus, including running until I erupt in a coughing fit.

Now, standing outside on the sidewalk next to our stranded toxin wagon, I look south down Barbur. At least in this section, there is a sidewalk. I move to the open front door of the bus and say to the driver, "Are we staying here?"

"Yes. We're going to have to get another bus."

Excellent news. Wonderful. I figure I am about three or four miles from home; I could walk it in an hour. So I start trudging, giving a mental, obscenity-laced shout-out to Bio Boy and fate.

I've walked for about 15 minutes when I hear the unmistakable TriMet diesel engine that is hard-wired into my bus-catching DNA. It's the No. 12, up and running again. In the blackness, it hurls by me. Why doesn't the driver stop? Doesn't he know it's me, with my huge backpack and beat-down, Friday-night-after-work demeanor? He saw me walk away. Did I insult him by giving up on TriMet?

I walk for another 10 minutes and reach the Barbur Transit Center--and there is the No. 12. There are all the passengers, milling about. There is Bio Boy, sitting on the ground against a wall, head down, unmoving.

But there are no men in hazmat suits, no ambulances, no fire trucks. Just the quiet, blacked-out, empty hulk of our bus. I find my friend Jackie, the Paul Revere of puke, and get the details. Another bus is coming to meet us at the transit center. This happened to her once before, which is why she knows the drill, knows that TriMet considers vomit a biohazard.

In just a few minutes, the substitute bus arrives, coming all the way from the Rose Quarter to rescue us. We all board, except for Bio Boy, and continue off into the night. If fate is kind, we have not been exposed to plague germs.