I went to the movies this afternoon. No big deal there. I was standing at the snack bar and thinking about buying a snack. Suddenly I say a woman wheeling backward as if she was doing a backward cartwheel and had lost control. As she began her tumble, I stepped forward to try and catch her. Before I could, she landed heavily on her seat and rolled up her back and hit her head hard.
She said she was “fine” and we could go off to our movies. But she didn’t move her legs, and she now said her back hurt. Moments before she told us her mouth hurt. Bystanders, myself included, asked her how she was doing. Here was this woman lying on the floor in the theater lobby and the question was is she okay and did you call the ambulance. The bystanders saw the spectacle as I knelt by her side and talked to her, assuring her that she was not alone as others craned their necks to see the woman on the floor.
And the advice came; Shouldn’t you get her off the floor? How did she fall? Are you family? Did you call her family? Meanwhile, she kept worrying we were being inconvenienced.
I waited with her until the ambulance came. Theatergoers were still asking what happened. The EMT team heard her complain about her head, and now her back. They wondered what happened and putting her in a collar to take her for evaluation. The EMT’s thanked us for keeping her lying down. She thanked me for staying by her side. The Ambulance took her away.
I went to the movie.
