Metro

Worker rescued from subway: I want comfy bed and a beer

The construction site.

The construction site. (MTA/Flickr)

The construction worker rescued from thick, chest-high muck at the Second Avenue Subway construction pit after being stuck for four hours today wanted just two things — a comfy bed and a cold beer.

“It was f–king cold,” hard hat Joseph Barone, from Lyndhurst, NJ, told The Post from the emergency room at Weill Cornell Medical Center.

“The firemen were reassuring me, ‘You’re coming out of here.’ They said we’re not leaving you. I just stayed calm. You can’t panic. I’m a calm person,” said Barone, who works for contractor E. E. Cruz.

He did worry who would provide for his family.

“I was thinking if I don’t come home, who’s going to pay the bills?”

He plans to kick back with a cold one as soon as he is discharged from the hospital.

“I’m going to have a beer and relax when I get home,” he said.

Until then, he’d settle for a room in the hospital, which was so overcrowded he was stuck in the ER all day and into the evening yesterday.

“I haven’t slept since yesterday morning. Probably the adrenaline,” said Barone, who was rescued at 12:40 am on Monday.

“I’m keeping myself busy [in the emergency room]. Being here is like watching Scrubs.”

His wife Candy said he always keeps a positive attitude.

“He’s always in a good mood,” she said.

But the accommodations aren’t helping, she said.

“What do I have to do to get a room? He hasn’t rested at all!” she said.

Barone, who suffered severe bruising and hypothermia, said the thick slurry pulled him in like “quicksand” after he stepped off a platform to dodge a crane at the $4 billion construction site.

“As soon as I got in the mud it sucked me in,” he said.

The FDNY launched one of its most elaborate rescues in recent memory to get him out.

“It was a tremendous experience for him. He didn’t fall. He just went into it accidently. It was like quicksand. That quicksand was pulling him down. That’s when he screamed for help. He was going deep and he was getting scared,” said Barone’s brother-in-law Herimeves Rodriguez, 68, Carlstadt, NJ.

About 150 firefighters were needed in the complicated rescue effort, which at times involved FDNY members hand digging the mud to try and remove him. The sludge even ate up a piece of plywood that was supposed to help him.

An elaborate vacuum was also rigged up to suck the slurry from the hole.

At one point, EMTs medicated Barone to ease his pain.

Eventually, a metal cage was lowered into the 75-foot pit and extracted him.

“I got out of the hole and I was like ‘oh my god, everyone is here,’” he said. “I lost my phone and $30 in the water.”

Barone — a 27 year veteran who works for the contractor E.E. Cruz Heavy Construction — said he’s is eager to get back to work.

He also wants to play a round of golf soon.

“It’s golf season, I want to get out on the golf course,” he said.

The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the MTA have launched investigations into the cause of the accident.

All work in that portion of the massive construction site was halted until officials determine what went wrong.

An E.E. Cruz worker was killed in another MTA construction site in 2009.

In that instance, a worker manning the Throgs Neck Bridge died when a boom snapped off and crushed him.

jennifer.fermino@nypost.com