I Was So Ill I Couldn’t Walk Until a Fellow Passenger Practically Supported Me to a Bathroom.

At the age of my late teens, my regular journey to work was on an crowded coach. It was perpetually full and would always be standing room only once I got on.

One particular morning, I was feeling quite nauseous when the coach swayed around the bends. I continuously reassured myself to hold on another few kilometres until the bus arrived at my stop, and then I could make a mad dash for the nearest washroom to be sick.

The bus was approaching the avenue close to the destination as it dawned on me I wasn’t going to make it. All of a sudden, it was like a fog descended upon me. Everything just went blank and silent; similar to when one cut the sound. I thought, “I am about to pass out”.

Luckily I was near the front of the bus, allowing me to take a couple of steps forward and asked the driver to stop, explaining to him that I was about to be sick. He opened the entrance and I hurriedly stepped on to the pavement.

My intention was to not get sick in front of a busy multi-lane road, so I forced myself up and started trying to make my way toward the green space opposite the street, where I thought it would allow me to secretly conceal myself behind a bush to be sick. However I likely fainted. I sensed my limbs, but I couldn’t walk or see properly, so I began inching my way to the park.

“Are you okay, dear?”

Right then, I was lifted up. I sensed someone holding me and a man’s voice asked, “You right, love?” I explained to this mysterious stranger that I required to vomit. Thus, he practically carried me into an adjacent building and placed me in the ladies’ toilets. He asked me if I wanted him to wait for me but I declined.

Not long after, I regained my composure sufficiently to sit on the restroom floor when from beyond the door I heard his voice asking, “Are you OK, love? Is there anything you require?” I was incapable to get up just then but I was able to thank him and following a brief period recovered the use of my legs. I returned home and then spent the next few days getting over what was later diagnosed as a horrible case of gastroenteritis.

I never saw that man’s face – merely his legs along with a sizable metal toolbox he held – yet he rescued me, at a moment I was at my most vulnerable.

Frequently, society tends to make people self-protective, pushy, and rivalrous. What he did was the kind of action that undoes that emotional callousness. He served as evidence that humanity’s innate tendency leans toward compassion, a quality I adore about humanity.