I was waiting on the platform at Back Bay Station to catch the subway home and I noticed a couple in a loud animated argument. The man was trying to get the woman to leave the station and she kept insisting she would not. Eventually the man gave up and exited the platform via the escalator. The woman then got even more agitated than she had been before. She was talking to herself (yelling at herself would be more accurate) and running from one point on the platform to another.
First she ran down to the empty booth and then back to the bottom of the escalator and then to one edge of the platform and then to the other. I was started to worry that she might run right off the edge of the platform. There were no T employees in sight and I started to run up the stairs to the control booth but as I neared the top of the stairs I saw that booth was empty too so I returned back down the stairs to the platform.
I looked around to see if there might anyone else who might help but the few people on the platform stared blankly into their phones or looked the other way. Some moved away from the woman down to the other end of the platform. Several times as she ran to the edge of the platform she nearly knocked me down. It was as though she thought she could run right through me.
As she returned from the edge of the platform and paused briefly at the bottom of the escalator, I grabbed her wrist and shook her arm. She stopped yelling and looked at me with a startled look on her face. I said to her in a loud authoritative voice, “You can’t be down here. Go upstairs!”. She paused for a moment and to my surprise turned and walked up the stairs towards the turnstiles. I followed her long enough to see her walk out the door of the station, turn right, and walk calmly down the sidewalk towards Copley Square.
