The Queens Graffiti Mecca 5 Pointz Was Never Just About the Painting on the Outside
Tessa Stuart
Nicole Gagne doesn't remember the fall itself, or any of the month that followed. She spent almost all of it in a hospital bed, pumped full of a painkiller that had the happy side effect of causing temporary amnesia.
So she doesn't remember the concrete staircase dissolving under the weight of her step. She doesn't remember dropping three and a half floors, or landing on her side, wedged between two piles of wooden pallets. And she doesn't remember being buried under the spall and rebar that fell more slowly than she did.
Gagne had complained to the building's super about the pallets the day before. That she remembers. They had been sitting in that corner of the otherwise bare cement courtyard for weeks, maybe even months. Too long, in any case. The super asked the pallets' owners, proprietors of a T-shirt manufacturing business on the first floor, to remove them an hour before Gagne fell. They didn't, and it is probably the only reason she is still alive.
She doesn't remember the fire department arriving on the scene, or the firefighters setting up airbags to lift the rubble off of her one piece at a time. She doesn't remember clawing at the breathing tube that was inserted into her throat, pulling it out and damaging her vocal cords.
http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2014/07/artists-working-inside-5-pointz.php
