The Bus I Refused to Board

I caught the 7:15 express every workday for six years. Same stop, same driver waving me on, same seat if I was lucky. Routine is the whole point of a commute; you stop making decisions.

That Thursday the bus pulled up and my legs went on strike. I do not mean I felt uneasy. I mean I stood at the open doors with my pass in my hand and my body would not perform the step. The driver looked at me; I looked at him. There was no thought attached, no image of disaster, nothing so cinematic — just a flat, total NO occupying the space where walking normally happens. A woman went around me, annoyed. The doors hissed shut and the 7:15 left with my whole morning schedule aboard.

The refusal switched off the moment the bus turned the corner, like a hand releasing. I stood there embarrassed, furious, already composing the apology email for missing the morning meeting. The next express was twenty-five minutes out. I got a coffee. I want to be honest: by the time I boarded the 7:40 I had diagnosed myself with burnout and resolved to book a holiday.

The 7:40 crawled. Traffic thickened, then stopped, then police waved us onto a side road, and through the window, on the bridge approach, I saw the back half of the 7:15 with a lorry folded into its left side — the side with my usual seat, third window from the rear.

Eleven people went to hospital that day; nobody died, which the news called a miracle of angles. I do not know what to call the thing that parked itself in my legs for ninety seconds. I only know it had no patience for my schedule, no interest in explaining itself, and no precedent in six years — and that I have learned to stand very still and listen whenever my body outvotes me.