Joseph Lynskey was standing on the platform of the 18th Street subway station in Manhattan, waiting for a train to take him to Brooklyn on the afternoon of Dec. 31.
He had just had lunch with friends and was headed home to get ready for a New Year’s Eve party.
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Suddenly he found himself in midair above the tracks. He saw the lights of an oncoming train, so close that he could make out the shape of the train’s operator. He did not expect to survive.
“My life did not flash before my eyes,” he said. “My thought was ‘I’ve been pushed, and I’m going to get hit by the train.’”
His head, and then his body, crashed into the ground between the tracks. Blood pooled beneath his skull. The wetness, and the searing pain, let him know he was alive.
But when he opened his eyes, he saw that he was not out of danger. “I looked up, and I was underneath the 1 train,” he said.