No Good Deed

This morning, as I regrettably do most workday mornings, I took the train to New York. A crowded platform typically awaits people getting off the train, with only relatively narrow passageways to slip through en route to one of the various stairways or escalators that cough up travelers from the bowels of the train station.
Sometimes people stand in the middle of these narrow tracts through which others must pass, essentially precluding their passage. This particular morning, as I squeezed through, my backpack bumped a woman. I said excuse me and looked back. She appeared to be near tears, but I kept walking. My concern, however, for a fellow traveler got the better of me as I reached the next set of stairs.
I was going to be better. I was going to rise above the par-for-the-course nature of this shit-heel blight of a city. I was going to put my humanity on display. I went back to see if she was all right. Not from having been bumped, but she just appeared to be in some kind of distress. So I say: "Are you ok."
To which she screams: "You pushed me."
And I say: "I said 'excuse me.' "
She screams: "Why did you push me?"
I was like, "Wow," while weighing her disproportionate hostility. I'm standing there, and she starts to funnel up the escalator, with plexiglass providing a barrier between us. She's ascending, among the throngs, screaming "Fuck you, fuck you," while I stand and watch through the glass, contemplating this gesticulating Manhattan hyena, trying to summon the intestinal fortitude necessary to maintain my dignity. I once read something about composure being the ability to keep your head when people around you are losing theirs.
I don't say anything. But I'm thinking: If you're fucking fat ass hadn't been taking up three-quarters of the platform, I wouldn't have come anywhere near you, you fucking cunt. If you had taken three fucking seconds to consider that there might be other people out here and not just worry about your own fucking self, this might not have occurred. Fucking cunt.
Try to maintain your humanity in a city like this. A city in which wealth and avarice abut the filthy and impoverished street panhandling and the huddled masses beat like ticking time bombs.