Feeling So Sick I Couldn’t Walk Until a Fellow Passenger Virtually Carried Me to a Bathroom.

Back when I was 19 years old, my morning travel was on an express bus. It remained jammed and would always be standing room only once I stepped aboard.

During a certain commute, I was feeling quite nauseous when the coach lurched around the bends. I kept telling myself to persevere another few kilometres so the bus could arrived at my destination, so I could then make a mad dash toward the most convenient public restroom to throw up.

The bus was approaching the road leading to the stop when it dawned on me I would not be to hold on. Suddenly, it seemed a curtain fell over me. My vision turned hazy and muffled; like someone had turned off the audio. My mind raced, “I will lose consciousness”.

Thankfully, I was positioned close to the driver on the bus, so I took a few steps to ask the driver and requested that the driver to open the doors, telling him I needed to vomit. The driver opened the doors and I hurriedly stepped on to the pavement.

I was resolved to not get sick before a busy multi-lane road, so I gathered myself and started trying to stumble across to the park opposite the street, where I believed it would allow me to secretly conceal myself near some foliage to vomit. However I apparently blacked out. I could feel my physical self, yet I was unable to walk or see properly, leading me to start crawling towards the park.

“You right, love?”

At that moment, I got scooped up. I felt a strong arm supporting me and heard a man say, “Everything alright, love?” I told this unknown man that I required to get to a bathroom. Therefore, he almost helped me walk down into an adjacent building and placed me in the ladies’ toilets. He asked me whether I required him to stay with me but I refused.

Not long after, I had recovered enough to sit on the restroom floor and from the other side of the door I heard his voice asking, “Do you need anything, love? Is there anything you require?” I wasn’t able to stand up just then but I was able to express my gratitude and following a brief period was able to move my feet. I returned home and spent several days healing from what turned out to be a horrible case of gastroenteritis.

I did not see the stranger’s face – merely his legs along with a sizable container for tools he held – but he helped 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 melts away that protective shell. He demonstrated that our default setting is to be kind, a trait I cherish about my fellow humans.