Feeling So Sick I Was Unable to Walk Until a Fellow Passenger Virtually Carried Me to the Toilets.

Back when I was 19 years old, my regular journey to work meant taking an express bus. The vehicle was always crowded and invariably became standing room only by the time I got on.

On one specific day, I was feeling quite nauseous while the vehicle rocked around every turn. I continuously reassured myself to endure just a little longer until the bus reached where I needed to get off, and then I could sprint quickly to the closest washroom to be sick.

The bus was approaching the street towards the stop when it dawned on me I wasn’t going to hold on. In an instant, it seemed a fog descended upon me. The world became hazy and muffled; similar to when one cut the sound. My mind raced, “I will lose consciousness”.

Fortunately, I stood toward the front inside the vehicle, so I took a couple of steps to ask the driver and told the operator to stop, telling him I needed to vomit. He promptly opened the doors and I stumbled out on to the pavement.

I was determined not to vomit in view of a busy multi-lane road, so I picked myself up and started trying to make my way across to the park across the road, where I thought I could at least find some privacy among some shrubs to throw up. However I likely blacked out. I sensed my limbs, but I couldn’t walk or see properly, so I began crawling towards the park.

“You right, love?”

In that instant, someone picked me up. I felt a strong arm supporting me and a stranger inquired, “Everything alright, love?” I managed to tell the kind passerby that I had to to get to a bathroom. Therefore, he almost helped me walk over to a close-by structure and placed me into the female bathroom. He inquired if I wanted him to stay with me but I refused.

Not long after, I had recovered to the point of sitting down when from beyond the door came him ask, “Are you OK, love? Is there anything you require?” I was incapable to stand up at that moment but I was able to thank him and shortly thereafter recovered the use of my legs. I got myself home and spent the next few days healing from what turned out to be a horrible case of gastroenteritis.

I never glimpsed the stranger’s face – merely his legs along with a sizable metal toolbox he held – but he saved me, at a moment I was completely helpless.

Frequently, society has a way of making you self-protective, pushy, and rivalrous. His act was the type of kindness that reverses that protective shell. He was proof that our default setting is towards kindness, a quality I adore in other people.