The Accident

R was a sensible man.At least, that's what he always said when uninformed people called him hard hearted or insensitive.After a point, he stopped correcting these ignoramuses which, instead of pleasing his detractors, annoyed them even more.Now, in addition to being called hard hearted and insensitive, they also called him antisocial and robotic.It's not as if this affected R. He figured it took all kinds to make the world, and even if he didn't know their purpose, he was sure nature wasn't dumb enough to make such a major evolutionary mistake.So, R went his way and paid no more attention to people anymore.
Another thing that R called himself, was regular.Every morning he woke at 5:25 and made his bed in two minutes.By 5:33, he would finish his bath and would walk to his kitchen to make himself a cup of tea, with two spoons of sugar. By 6:12, he would leave his house, and walk to the bus stop. His bus would arrive at 6:16 and R would sit by the window, third chair from the front, and read the newspaper.The bus would deposit him outside his lab at 7:47 and R would take the elevator to his lab on the second floor, where he needn't speak to anyone for the rest of the day.
Nothing in the past three years had caused this routine to change. So, one morning, R was mildly surprised to find that his bus had stopped unexpectedly in the middle of the road. He looked around to see all his co-passengers staring out of the window, horrified. He followed their gaze, and saw a man lying in the middle of the road, knocked down by a truck.He was wearing the bright yellow rain suit that all municipal road workers wore to be visible. The rain poured down on the man, who lay oblivious to both the rain and the crowd gathering round him.
Suddenly, the girl sitting next to R burst out crying. A few of the people got off their seats and were comforting her.R was puzzled. He asked whether she knew the man."No, but it's so sad!"and she launched into another bout of crying. R was appalled at how sentimental people got in the face of what he thought was a rather commonplace occurrence. Of course, when he voiced this opinion, all he got was horrified stares from all his passengers. The girl got up and sat elsewhere, peering at him through her wet handkerchief, as if he were some strange specimen.R sighed, and settled in his seat. On an ordinary day, he would have ignored what the people thought, but today he felt a strange desire to be accepted in their fold. He launched into a long spiel about the frailty of human life, accident statistics and the uselessness of sorrow. It was of no avail. The longer he spoke, he more he felt their hostility. Abruptly, R cut short his speech, seething inwardly. The bus arrived at his stop, and R got off, completing his arguments in his own head.
R never saw the truck coming. In fact, he was so busy justifying himself in his head, that he didn't even hear the desperate honking of the truck driver. He did feel it though, as it hit him squarely and threw him to the ground, limp as a rag doll.As he lay there, unable to feel anything, it began to rain. And in the pouring rain, he watched the people gather around him, in an uncanny recreation of what he had seen earlier. R would have told them not to grieve, but instead he just sighed and shut his eyes. In a passing bus somewhere, R thought he heard a girl sobbing.
(This is inspired in part by the movie stranger than fiction and an accident i witnessed on my way to college.I have no idea what happened to that man, I hope he recovered)