In Such Poor Health I Couldn’t Walk When a Man Practically Supported Me to the Toilets.

Back when I was my late teens, my daily commute meant taking an packed public transport. It remained crowded and was consistently standing room only once I got on.

One particular morning, I began feeling incredibly sick while the vehicle lurched around every turn. I repeatedly told myself to persevere another few kilometres so the bus could got to my destination, and then I could sprint quickly to the closest washroom to be sick.

We were coming down the street towards my stop and it dawned on me I would not be to hold on. In an instant, it felt as if a curtain fell over me. Everything just went hazy and muffled; like someone had cut the sound. I said to myself, “I’m going to faint”.

Thankfully, I was positioned near the front on the bus, so I took a couple of steps to ask the driver and requested that the driver to stop, telling him that I was about to vomit. He promptly opened the entrance and I stumbled out out onto the street.

I was resolved to avoid being sick before a busy multi-lane road, so I picked myself up and started trying to stumble across to the park across the road, where I believed I’d at least be able to discreetly hide among some shrubs to be sick. Yet I must have fainted. I could feel my limbs, but I couldn’t walk and my vision was blurry, so I started crawling towards the park.

“Are you okay, dear?”

In that instant, I got scooped up. I felt an arm around my waist and a man’s voice asked, “You right, love?” I managed to tell the kind passerby that I needed to be sick. Thus, he practically supported my weight into an adjacent building and guided me in the ladies’ toilets. He asked me if I wanted him to wait for me but I declined.

After a short while, I regained my composure sufficiently to sit on the toilet when from beyond the door I heard him inquire, “Do you need anything, love? Is there anything you require?” I was incapable to get up right away but did manage to express my gratitude and after a few more minutes recovered the use of my limbs. I returned home and then spent the next few days getting over which was a nasty tummy bug.

I never glimpsed that man’s face – only his legs and the big steelwork tools container he had with him – but he saved me, during a time when 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 reverses that hardening of the heart. He demonstrated that our default setting is towards kindness, a trait I cherish about humanity.