Here’s an excerpt from Eleanor Traubman’s Blizzard of 2010 story. You can read the rest on her blog, Creative Times.

I decided even in the swirly whirls of the blizzard to go out to SoHo in Manhattan yesterday. On the way back, the train’s last stop ended up being two stops short of my subway stop. When I got out, there was a man lying in the snow with one woman kneeling down beside him. It turned out that he was a city employee who was shoveling show off the steps descending to the subway. He had fallen into a big patch of snow against the wall at the bottom of the stairs and was afraid to move because he was in so much pain. It also turned out that he had a heart condition. The woman and I stayed with him and kept checking in to make sure his supervisor (very gruff guy) called 911. We kept hearing that 911 was extremely backed up and the wait for help could be hours.

The whole vibe down there with his colleagues was pretty rough. Kind of a dog-eat-dog vibe.

At some point, a male nurse joined me and the other woman and he was really great, a kind and gentle soul. Donald, the guy who had fallen, finally could not take the cold of lying in the snow anymore and asked us to move him out of it. Another bystander came and helped the nurse move Donald to a dryer spot. I said “Donald, you win the prize for having the worst Monday” and he laughed…

Read more at Creative Times.