THENEWYORKER,M AY4, 2020 41
“Unfortunately, my evil deeds attracted media attention.”• •
HOME.” In the Herald Square station,
which has eight subway lines running
through it, plus a PATH-train termi-
nal, every concession was closed. An
elderly woman dozed behind a phone-
charging kiosk, sitting on a suitcase,
leaning against a well-filled shop-
ping cart, her head nodding. Jackson’s
office is a windowless box on the lower
mezzanine level. There was a map
of the subway system taped on her
wall, a tall black metal bookcase with
stacks of forms on the shelves, and,
in the corner, a large orange heavy-
duty flashlight.
The headway was a little extended—
subway language for fewer trains run-
ning than usual. The system had been
plagued by staff shortages. To date,
sixty-seven transit workers had died
from the coronavirus. Twenty-five hun-
dred had tested positive, and more than
four thousand were in quarantine. The
Metropolitan Transportation Author-
ity has a workforce of around seventy
thousand. It had been accused of ne-
glecting the safety of its workers, a
charge the M.T.A. leadership denies.
“We have a lot of fallen soldiers, but
we’re hanging in there,” Jackson said,
into the phone. “You stay blessed.” She
hung up. She was giving overtime to
the cleaners.
She manages thirteen stations, from
midtown to SoHo and the Lower East
Side, and disinfecting them had be-
come a high priority: the handrails, the
garbage cans, the MetroCard vending
machines, the turnstiles, the elevator
buttons—“everywhere a customer
touches.” That morning, she had car-
ried bags of personal protective equip-
ment with her as she rode the train to
Delancey Street–Essex Street, hand-
ing out supplies to employees who
needed them. Although passenger
traffic has plummeted, the subway still
carries four hundred thousand people
a day, and, Jackson had noticed, cus-
tomers were very appreciative, saying,
“Thank you so much for running,” and
“I don’t know how I’d get to work with-
out the train.”
Back on the phone: “Did Delancey
call for comfort?” (Sotto voce: “That
means leaving the booth to go to the
bathroom.”) Above her mask, her brows
knitted. She listened, and nodded.
“Whenever you leave the booth, you
need to call,” she said. “We’ll never tell
you no.” As she spoke, she typed data
into a spreadsheet on a computer mon-
itor. Her energy seemed unlimited. But
maybe she was exhausted. It was hard
to tell with the mask.- Around three o’clock, Megan Liu stared
at her screen as Lee Goldman, the head
of the Columbia University Medical
Center, addressed her graduating class
from his office desk: “I just want to say
how proud we are of all of you ... ” A
pixelated audience looked on as a few
other speakers made their remarks.
Goldman cut back in. “I apologize,” he
said. “I’m going to have to get off for
another call.” More than six hundred
COVID patients had been admitted to
NewYork-Presbyterian, where Gold-
man is a cardiologist—he was in the
process of “doing some redeployment,”
he said, and left the Zoom meeting.
Liu sat in her apartment on a small
couch next to a mini-fridge, drinking
a glass of white wine. She and her class-
mates were graduating a month early in
order to provide a wave of reinforcements
for New York City’s hospitals. The cer-
emony lasted an hour. At the end, the
faculty invited each student to offer a
five-word salutation. One by one, the
faces of the city’s newest doctors popped
up on Liu’s screen, along with their mes-
sages: “Please don and doff carefully.”
“Healthcare is a human right.” And
“We’re coming for you, coronavirus!”- Seven people on the line. “Do we have
Ginnie or Robert yet?” Robert York,
the editor-in-chief of the Daily News,
asked.
“I’ll Slack ’em,” Ginger Adams Otis,
the metro editor, said. A few minutes
later, at 3:03 p.m., Ginnie Teo, the na-
tional editor, and Robert Dominguez,