I Was So Ill I Couldn’t Walk Until a Fellow Passenger Essentially Lifted Me to a Restroom.

Back when I was my late teens, my daily commute involved an express bus. It remained crowded and would always be standing room only when I got on.

During a certain commute, I was feeling incredibly sick when the coach rocked around the bends. I kept telling myself to persevere just a little longer until the bus got to my stop, at which point I could rush hurriedly for the nearest public toilet to vomit.

We were coming down the road leading to the stop when I realised I wasn’t going to hold on. All of a sudden, it seemed a veil came over me. My vision turned hazy and muffled; as if someone cut the sound. I said to myself, “I am about to pass out”.

Luckily I was close to the driver inside the vehicle, allowing me to take several steps to ask the driver and told the operator to stop, telling him that I was about to get ill. He promptly opened the doors and I weakly exited onto the sidewalk.

My intention was to avoid being sick in view of a busy multi-lane road, so I forced myself up and endeavored to make my way to the park across the road, where I believed it would allow me to secretly conceal myself among some shrubs to be sick. Yet I must have fainted. I sensed my body but walking was impossible and my vision was blurry, so I began dragging myself toward the grassy area.

“Everything alright, love?”

At that moment, someone picked me up. I felt an arm around my waist and a man’s voice asked, “You right, love?” I told this mysterious stranger that I needed to be sick. Therefore, he almost helped me walk over to a close-by structure and guided me into the female bathroom. He asked me whether I required 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, “Do you need anything, love? Do you need anything?” I was incapable to rise right away but I did succeed to thank him and shortly thereafter regained the function of my feet. I made my way home and then spent several days recovering from what was later diagnosed as a severe stomach virus.

I never saw the stranger’s face – just his lower half and the big container for tools he held – but he saved me, during a time when I was in my weakest state.

Often this world tends to make people guarded, hostile, and combative. What he did was the kind of action that undoes that hardening of the heart. He was proof that people’s natural inclination leans toward compassion, a trait I cherish about my fellow humans.