Deep Reads: The nurse in the NYC subway
Post Reports
The Washington Post
4.4 • 5.1K Ratings
🗓️ 26 April 2025
⏱️ 27 minutes
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Summary
Lisa Singh has spent the past six months working overnight on the subway platforms of New York, where homelessness, mental illness, drug addiction and crime had been unfolding as overlapping crises. Since Lisa had taken the job, a woman died after being lit on fire on an F train at Coney Island, a man was pushed into the path of an oncoming train in Manhattan, and other riders were shoved, punched and stabbed in unprovoked attacks.
Before this work, Lisa had spent years as a nurse in a psychiatric emergency room, so she knew how difficult it could be to treat schizophrenic or bipolar patients who couldn’t always advocate for themselves. Now, she has the power to order involuntary removals of people with mental illness and hospitalize them for up to 72 hours, and she can use the orders at her discretion to remove mentally ill people who cannot meet their basic needs — even if they aren’t acting dangerously toward others.
This story follows Lisa through several shifts in the New York City subway. The piece was reported, written and read by Ruby Cramer. Audio production and original music by Bishop Sand.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, I'm Ruby Kramer, an enterprise reporter for The Washington Post. I wrote this story as part of our |
| 0:06.6 | Deepread series, which showcases narrative journalism here at the Post. This is a story about a nurse |
| 0:13.5 | named Lisa, who works in the New York subway system. Lisa works nights and moves from subway station to subway station. Her patients are the people |
| 0:25.6 | she meets on the platforms. They might be experiencing homelessness, drug issues, and a lot of them |
| 0:34.8 | have untreated mental illness. It's very difficult work. She often has minutes |
| 0:41.0 | to make her assessment before somebody walks away or steps onto a train, and it's all happening |
| 0:46.2 | in a very chaotic environment, as you will soon hear. Part of Lisa's work is deciding when to send |
| 0:52.9 | someone to the hospital against their will. |
| 0:55.5 | It's a controversial tool that the mayor and the governor in New York are trying to use more and more, |
| 1:01.1 | and it's become the subject of a big policy debate. In practice, as you'll hear in this story, |
| 1:07.6 | a lot of the work is really one nurse trying to make the best and most humane |
| 1:11.7 | decision she can. I reported this story in New York City. You'll hear me reading the story, |
| 1:17.6 | and you'll also hear bits and pieces of sound from my tape recorder that I used while I was |
| 1:22.4 | reporting the piece this spring. Okay, here's the story. |
| 1:39.8 | The first thing Lisa Singh saw that worried her was the way the woman on the subway platform |
| 1:44.5 | waved her off. The dismissiveness. Sometimes that was a sign of something. Lisa, a 53-year-old |
| 1:51.7 | psychiatric nurse, took a step closer and scanned the woman's face, searching for answers |
| 1:56.7 | about what kind of care she might need. |
| 2:03.9 | The woman was slumped over on a bench at the 34th Street Herald Square Station. |
| 2:06.8 | One subway stop in a city |
| 2:08.5 | where the mayor, the governor, |
| 2:10.4 | and now the president |
... |
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