Feeling So Sick I Couldn’t Walk As a Stranger Essentially Lifted Me to a Bathroom.

During my nineteenth year, my morning travel involved an packed public transport. It remained jammed and was consistently without any seats once I stepped aboard.

One particular morning, I was feeling terribly ill as the bus swayed around the bends. I kept telling myself to hold on for a few more stops before the bus arrived at 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 street towards the stop when I understood I wasn’t going to last. All of a sudden, it was like a curtain fell over me. Everything just went white and really quiet; as if someone muted everything. I said to myself, “I am about to pass out”.

Luckily I was near the front on the bus, so I took several steps to ask the driver and requested that the driver to pull over, explaining to him I needed to be sick. He opened the entrance and I hurriedly stepped on to the pavement.

I was determined to not get sick in view of multiple lanes of cars, so I forced myself up and endeavored to walk to the park across the road, thinking I could I’d at least be able to secretly conceal myself among some shrubs to be sick. Yet I apparently blacked out. I could feel my limbs, but I couldn’t walk or see clearly, so I began crawling towards the park.

“Are you okay, dear?”

Right then, someone picked me up. I felt someone holding me and a stranger inquired, “Are you okay, dear?” I managed to tell the mysterious stranger that I needed to be sick. Thus, he practically carried me over to an adjacent building and placed me inside the women’s restroom. He asked me whether I required him to remain with me but I declined.

A few minutes later, I regained my composure sufficiently to sit on the restroom floor and from the other side of the door I heard him inquire, “Are you feeling better, dear? Can I get you something?” I wasn’t able to stand up right away but I did succeed to say thank you and following a brief period recovered the use of my limbs. I made my way home and spent the following days recovering from what was later diagnosed as a horrible case of gastroenteritis.

I never saw his features – merely his legs along with a sizable metal toolbox he had with him – but he saved me, during a time when I was completely helpless.

Often this world tends to make people guarded, hostile, and combative. His was the sort of gesture that undoes that hardening of the heart. He served as evidence that our default setting is to be kind, a trait I cherish in other people.