Chapter 2

2

There was a massive pile of human waste right in the middle of my seat, and the smell of urine was everywhere.

A passenger told me a woman in her thirties had done it.

She had walked up with a black plastic bag and asked if this was where the "girl with the glasses" sat.

The moment they confirmed it, she dumped the entire bag of filth onto my cushion.

There was no doubt in my mind who it was.

"Honey, who did you piss off? That woman looked like she was out for blood," an older lady whispered.

"You should call the cops. This has to be some kind of biohazard or harassment," another said.

The flight attendant arrived shortly after, looking horrified.

She knew about the emergency I had just handled and felt terrible.

She told me not to worry, that they would clean it up, and that I could go wait in the dining car.

I tried to stay calm, thinking it wasn't worth the drama to fight a woman like that.

But when I reached for my laptop bag―

It was gone.

I was traveling light for a medical seminar, and that bag held everything I needed.

I had left it right there when I ran to help the old man.

The neighbor told me the woman had grabbed it.

After dumping the waste on my seat, she simply tossed my bag out of the moving train's window.

That was the breaking point.

The laptop was expensive, but the six pages of handwritten notes from the seminar were irreplaceable.

I had spent the whole trip preparing to share those insights with my department back home.

And that woman just threw them into the middle of nowhere?

"Officer, I want to press charges!" I told the transit police, my eyes stinging with tears of rage.

The attendant tried to comfort me, saying they could track the location using the train's GPS and have a ground crew look for it.

I didn't care if they found it or not; I wanted that woman held accountable.

Is there no justice in this world?

The police brought me and the mother, Brenda Gold, into a room for questioning.

That's when I realized that some people are just built differently―and by differently, I mean they are pure trash.

"Yeah, I dropped the bag. It was an accident," Brenda said, smirking at me.

"My son had to go, and we couldn't find a bathroom. Is it a crime to use a plastic bag in an emergency?"

The officer looked like he wanted to scream. "The bathrooms are at the end of every single car!"

Brenda rolled her eyes. "Well, we're just simple folks from the country. I didn't know where the bathroom was in that fancy rest car you kicked us into."

She insisted she was just carrying the bag to the trash and "tripped" near my seat.

"So what? It's a mistake. I'll give the maid twenty bucks for the cleaning fee. Big deal."

The officer gave me a look that said his hands were tied since she wasn't admitting it was intentional.

"What about the laptop bag? You threw a passenger's property out of a moving train," the officer demanded.

Brenda's face changed into a mask of fake innocence. "Oh, that! I saw this suspicious black bag with a ticking sound coming from it. I thought it was a bomb! I was saving everyone's lives! I'm a hero, really."

She looked at me and grinned. "Sorry about your bag, sweetie. If you can prove what it's worth, I'll pay you back. Is three hundred dollars enough?"

I turned white with rage, and even the officer had reached his limit.

"Brenda Gold, stop playing games!"