In Such Poor Health I Couldn’t Walk Until a Fellow Passenger Virtually Carried Me to a Bathroom.
During my nineteenth year, my regular journey to work involved an express bus. The vehicle was always crowded and was consistently standing room only by the time I stepped aboard.
During a certain commute, I started experiencing terribly ill while the vehicle lurched around the bends. I kept telling myself to persevere just a little longer until the bus got to where I needed to get off, so I could then make a mad dash for the nearest washroom to be sick.
We were coming down the road leading to the destination as I realised I would not be to make it. All of a sudden, it felt as if a fog descended upon me. The world became hazy and muffled; like someone had muted everything. My mind raced, “I will lose consciousness”.
Thankfully, I was positioned toward the front on the bus, so I took a couple of steps to ask the driver and told the operator to stop, informing him I needed to be sick. He opened the doors and I weakly exited out onto the street.
My intention was to not get sick before a busy multi-lane road, so I forced myself up and began attempting to stumble to the park across the road, where I believed I could at least find some privacy near some foliage to be sick. Yet I must have fainted. I sensed my physical self, yet I was unable to walk or see clearly, so I started inching my way to the grassy area.
“You right, love?”
At that moment, I got scooped up. There was an arm around my waist and heard a man say, “Everything alright, love?” I explained to this mysterious stranger that I needed to be sick. So he virtually helped me walk into a close-by structure and placed me inside the women’s restroom. He inquired if I needed him to stay with me but I refused.
A few minutes later, I regained my composure to the point of sitting on the toilet and from outside the stall I heard his voice asking, “Are you feeling better, dear? Is there anything you require?” I could not to rise right away but I did succeed to thank him and shortly thereafter regained the function of my feet. I returned home and then spent the following days getting over which was a horrible case of gastroenteritis.
I never glimpsed his features – merely his legs along with a sizable container for tools he was carrying – but he helped me, at a moment I was at my most vulnerable.
Often this world tends to make people guarded, hostile, and combative. His act was the type of kindness that melts away that hardening of the heart. He was proof that humanity’s innate tendency is to be kind, a quality I adore in other people.
