Every day, nearly 6,000 cars rumble along New York Citys below- and above-ground subway tracks, serving some 3.7 million passengers. Each year, nearly 1.3 billion individual trips are taken with many at full-price fare, meaning the subways annually generate revenue upwards of $2 billion.

Among the city's 25 subway lines are tracks leftover from three former competitors. Beginning with Interborough Rapid Transit Company, or IRT, there followed Brooklyn Manhattan Transit, or BMT, and finally Independent Subway, IND, to which belongs the 8th Avenue Express, or A-Train. Measuring 75-feet long by 10-feet wide by 12-feet 2-inches high, each A-Train car weighs 87,000 pounds and contains benches for 75 seated passengers, plus standing capacity for an additional 103 persons. Running 24-hours a day, 7-days a week, the A-Train traces 31 miles through three boroughs powered by 625 volts of direct current crackling down the third rail.

On one part of the eventual circuit between Inwood-207th Street in Manhattan and Rockaway Park in Queens, the A-Train debuted on September 10, 1932. At that time it was an important public works project in the Great Depression. More importantly, it provided a much-needed mass transit loop for thousands of West Side commuters making their way to, and from, the city's many office buildings and cultural outposts.

Over the years, the A-Train has carried untold millions of passengers. Among them is Katharine Emily Fisher, a Connecticut-born 31-year old who is tall and muscular in the way of a runner. Pale skinned with jet-black hair, she also has blue eyes and a tilted smile that distorts her face into something both awkward and beautiful. As a WASP in the Dominican neighborhood of New York-Presbyterian Hospital, her employer, she's an outsider but she's carved out a niche for herself because she speaks English and Spanish.

With her leather attaché under one arm, she walks beneath the glass enclosure of the Hospitals Energy Court. Frustrated by December's dark afternoons, she thinks about going to the gym so she can be barelegged mid-winter.

Stepping through a revolving door and into the night, she holds her breath for the exhalations of a dozen smokers and looks down Broadway from the sidewalk where she stands a few yards from the 168th Street subway station. She sees passing gypsy cabs and focuses on the blue and red neon sign for Dallas Barbeque. Around it, a group of pear-shaped endomorphs ready themselves to eat fatty meats like circling zeppelins.

Under fortified wood and metal scaffolding, she walks south on Broadway for 2 and a half blocks and cuts westward on 165th Street. Around her, teenagers curse and laugh with the excitement of time off from school. Dressed in baggy denim, hanging wallet chains on the boys, bubble gum popping in the mouths of the girls, all wearing North Face jackets, she guesses at their destinations unknown and continues on.

Braced against the wind, she passes the Hospital's Eye Institute with its semi-circle driveway below an old brick façade that reminds her of chateaux in picture books of France. At Fort Washington, she walks under more scaffolding and sees other women walking home in wool overcoats with designer bag knock-offs slung over their shoulders. Huddling close to each building, she moves around the hospital, the one exercise regimen she daily performs before descending into the bowels of the earth to wind her way home.

A little boy with a ball crosses her path. Bundled in a jacket with earmuffs and a scarf but no gloves, he's unconcerned with anything but the nippled-surface of his basketball. Stumbling after him, Katharine is struck by longing, so strong is her wish to become a mother, although its held in check until she and her husband agree to start trying.

The scaffolding ends and she looks up Fort Washington with the entrance to the Hospital's Milstein Building on her left. In front of tall glass windows stands a mix of people, alternately happy and hopeful but her general impression is sadness. She can see tears, if she looks closely, and she meets the intense gaze of a young man, thin before his time, covered in blankets. A car alarm blares and a man walks his dog without a leash.

Katharine feels far from home. Light skinned, college-educated, and so far barren, she hears the piercing noise of an ambulance siren and winces. Then all is quiet.

On 168th Street at the intersection with Broadway, she descends two flights of stairs. She passes through a turnstile, swipes her MetroCard and descends two more flights until she's waiting on the platform.

An A-Train clangs and Katharine feels the trickle of her period beginning, a few days before Christmas. Vulgar jokes flash in mind and she imagines she can smell blood. As suddenly, she thinks of conception and pregnancy, despite the Lifestyles and Rough Riders she keeps in her nightstand, and she lusts for her husband.

With the train slowing to a stop, Katharine wants to make love. She wants a baby but then she smells a stinking blast of shit as the subway doors open.

The previous spring she was victimized by a bandit at 42nd Street who, for five straight days, shat along the northbound A-Train, leaving behind pyramids of human stool. That Monday she soiled her shoes. Tuesday she became careful. By Wednesday she was resigned to the problem and on Thursday and Friday she barely noticed until the following Monday when the platform was finally clean.

Holding up the passengers behind her, Katharine checks the soles of her shoes. Unable to see the source of the odor, she enters the car and finds a seat under a map of the subway. With her legs together, shes angry for the inconvenience of starting her period. In the same breath shes grateful to journey home as the train powers south from 168th Street.

A gray-haired black woman, small with age, sits against the metal armrest next to one of the doors. Humming to herself, she knits red yarn with her legs crossed.

At 125th Street three young black men enter with one drum each. The trains warning bell signals. A few stragglers leap aboard. There's a sigh of ignition and the train accelerates with a shift of inertia.

Katharine feels for her wallet and rationalizes her action because young black men mugged her 10 years before. She lost $20 dollars but the lasting effect was how long it took for her to settle into a crowd, this much complicated by a sleeping fat man, his body shifting onto her lap. Brushing her knees, she sees a bookish Latina bounce to her headphones and coming into view theres a beggar asking for money.

"Good evening," says the tallest of the three men with drums. "We're Downbeat. Give what you can, can you give?" he asks and counts off a set that's neither polished nor amateur, but mostly too loud.

The beggar holds out his hat. Katharine looks up to see the deep folds of sadness and resignation on his face. Beneath Central Park West, trapped under 30 feet of concrete and steel, she again feels guilty. Knowing she's already paid state and city taxes of over 10 percent, of which some small part is intended for the poor, she clings to her every last dollar. Still, she can't ignore this needy man and so relents from her usual remark, not today.

"Hello," she says and smiles. She reaches for her wallet, opens the coin purse and drops 85 cents into the beggars hat. He nods and continues on until hes standing in front of the old black woman with red yarn.

She looks up, re-crosses her legs, and hands him a $10 bill. He looks on in wonder and Downbeat grows louder.

Just before Columbus Circle, the drummers solicit tips before half the car empties. Katharine blinks, her eyes heavy with fatigue and she begins counting seconds until she transfers for home.

Passing through the 50th Street/8th Avenue station, she remembers the story her husband tells of trying to transfer from a southbound A-Train to a northbound E. Not yet realizing that 50th Street is a southbound-only transfer, she often thinks of him and his tale of frustration. Then she arrives at 42nd Street where she walks to the northbound E-Train headed for Queens.

Seated next to her is a small boy with a bag from Toys R Us, his mother looking through a stack of receipts. In front of her is a blind man holding on to a vertical support and next to him stands a drag queen in six-inch stilettos. The train pulls in to 50th Street to begin its eastward curl towards Jamaica. Theres a warning buzz as Katharine partly retraces her journey. Afterwards she falls asleep.

Twenty-five minutes later, she wakes up and sees the train doors open at Union Turnpike in Forest Hills. With a start, she gathers her things, feels the sticky puddle in her underpants, and scurries through the sliding doors as they close. Finally home, she thinks about taking a shower and pours a tall glass of eggnog when she steps through the door of her apartment.

Garrett Chaffin-Quiray received his BA and MA from the University of Southern California School of Cinema-Television. He has sponsored film festivals, taught TV and cinema history and published movie and video reviews. He has also managed information technology for an investment bank and has had a dot-com adventure. Mr. Chaffin-Quiray now lives in New York City developing scripts, researching various subjects in film and writing fiction.