Feeling So Sick I Couldn’t Walk As a Stranger Essentially Lifted Me to a Restroom.
During my 19 years old, my morning travel involved an packed public transport. It was perpetually crowded and was consistently standing room only once I got on.
On one specific day, I started experiencing incredibly sick as the bus rocked around each corner. I continuously reassured myself to persevere another few kilometres until the bus arrived at where I needed to get off, at which point I could sprint quickly for the nearest washroom to be sick.
The bus was approaching the avenue close to the stop when I realised I wasn’t going to hold on. All of a sudden, it was like a curtain fell over me. Everything just went white and really quiet; similar to when one turned off the audio. I said to myself, “I’m going to faint”.
Fortunately, I stood close to the driver inside the vehicle, allowing me to take a couple of steps toward the driver and asked the driver to pull over, telling him that I was about to get ill. The driver opened the doors and I stumbled out out onto the street.
I was resolved not to vomit in view of six lanes of traffic, so I picked myself up and started trying to walk to the park across the road, where I believed I’d at least be able to secretly conceal myself behind a bush to throw up. Yet I apparently fainted. I was aware of my body but I was unable to walk and my vision was blurry, leading me to start inching my way to the grassy area.
“Everything alright, love?”
In that instant, I was lifted up. There was an arm around my waist and heard a man say, “Everything alright, love?” I told this mysterious stranger that I required to vomit. So he virtually helped me walk down into an adjacent building and put me into the female bathroom. He asked me if I wanted him to wait for me but I refused.
After a short while, I had recovered to the point of sitting on the restroom floor and from the other side of the door came him inquire, “Do you need anything, love? Can I get you something?” I wasn’t able to rise at that moment but I was able to thank him and after a few more minutes was able to move my legs. I got myself home and then spent several days healing from what turned out to be a horrible case of gastroenteritis.
I never saw the stranger’s face – merely his legs along with a sizable steelwork tools container he held – but he saved me, at a moment I was completely helpless.
Often this world has a way of making you self-protective, pushy, and rivalrous. What he did was the kind of action that undoes that emotional callousness. He was proof that our default setting leans toward compassion, a quality I adore in other people.
