In Such Poor Health I Couldn’t Walk Until a Fellow Passenger Practically Supported Me to a Restroom.
Back when I was my late teens, my morning travel involved an crowded coach. It remained full and was consistently standing room only once I stepped aboard.
During a certain commute, I started experiencing quite nauseous as the bus rocked around every turn. I kept telling myself to hold on for a few more stops until the bus arrived at my destination, so I could then rush hurriedly for the nearest public restroom to throw up.
The bus was approaching the avenue close to the destination as I realised I wasn’t going to make it. In an instant, it was like a curtain fell over me. The world became white and really quiet; as if someone cut the sound. My mind raced, “I will lose consciousness”.
Thankfully, I was positioned near the front on the bus, so I took a few steps to ask the driver and told the operator to open the doors, explaining to him I needed to get ill. He opened the bus doors and I stumbled out out onto the street.
My intention was to not get sick in view of a busy multi-lane road, so I gathered myself and started trying to stumble across to the park on the other side, thinking I could I’d at least be able to find some privacy among some shrubs to vomit. Yet I must have blacked out. I was aware of my limbs, but I was unable to walk and my vision was blurry, so I began crawling towards my intended destination.
“Are you okay, dear?”
In that instant, someone picked me up. There was an arm around my waist and a stranger inquired, “Everything alright, love?” I managed to tell the kind passerby that I had to to get to a bathroom. Thus, he practically supported my weight into a nearby building and put me into the female bathroom. He asked me whether I required him to wait for me but I declined.
After a short while, I had recovered sufficiently to sit on the restroom floor when from beyond the door came him inquire, “Are you OK, love? Is there anything you require?” I was incapable to stand up at that moment but I was able to say thank you and following a brief period recovered the use of my feet. I got myself home and then spent several days recovering from what turned out to be a horrible case of gastroenteritis.
I never saw the stranger’s face – only his legs along with a sizable container for tools he held – but he helped me, during a time when I was in my weakest state.
Often this world has a way of making you self-protective, pushy, and rivalrous. His was the sort of gesture that undoes that protective shell. He was proof that our default setting leans toward compassion, something I love about humanity.
