Tell us about the time you rescued someone else (person or animal) from a dangerous situation. What happened? How did you prevail?
Did I tell you guys about the time Kevin nearly got ran over by an ambulance in New York City?
It was a few months after his motorcycle accident. It was July 2010. We had already booked a cruise out of New York to Canada and we weren’t sure if we would be able to go considering Kevin shattered his pelvis in April.
He had to live in a wheelchair for about 8 weeks after his accident to give his pelvis time to heal. Once the doctor’s said it was okay, he had to learn to walk all over again.
I tried to talk him out of the trip. Luckily, we had bought trip insurance and we could have gotten out of the trip if he really wanted to. He waffled back and forth on whether he could handle it and in the end, we went.
The trip was super hard on Kevin. SUPER HARD. We walked all over that city and poor Kevin hobbled along with his cane at first, but it just got to be too much for him so he switched to his walker.
You can really tell how weak and exhausted he was in this picture:
We were riding the New York subway and it was almost more than he could handle.
I felt so sorry for him.
And the weather certainly didn’t help – New York in July?!? What were we thinking?! I think we all lost five pounds in sweat alone.
We were only in New York a few days before catching our boat, but Kevin was exhausted after those few days and we still had another four days on a cruise boat to go!
In hindsight, we probably should have canceled the cruise. But I will say that though the trip for Kevin was super hard, it did him a world of good. He recovered by leaps and bounds after that trip. I think pushing himself really helped his body to heal faster.
But I wouldn’t want him to go through that again to test my theory.
And did I mention he didn’t complain once??
I am glad, though, that we took his walker. At least he instantly had someplace to sit when our walking just got to be too much.
We were walking through Times Square and … I don’t know if you’ve ever been to Times Square but it’s sensory overload, on crack. There’s so much noise. So many sights to see. So many people to dodge that your eyes don’t know where to land first and it’s hard to pick out sounds because THERE ARE SO MANY SOUNDS!
We were walking across the entrance to a side street, all of our heads turned in opposite directions, when I suddenly picked up the sound of a siren. (This was before I worked at the hospital – my life on foreshadow mode). I glanced down the side street and noticed an ambulance barreling toward us.
I hurried the boys across and then noticed that Kevin was distracted and hadn’t picked up on the fact that a two-ton truck was nearly on top of him. I yelled over the noise, frantically pointing in the direction of the white blur baring down on him. He was using his walker to cross the street and when he spotted the ambulance, he stumbled/speed walked to get out of the way.
I would have laughed but I was too terrified. It’s sort of like making a joke too soon after a traumatic event – the adrenaline hasn’t had a chance to wear off – and we had just survived six weeks of hospital and rehab after his motorcycle accident – how ironic would it have been for him to recover from that harrowing experience only to be run down by an ambulance, using his walker, in Times Square?
I didn’t really “rescue” him, more like I “warned” him, but I deserve a kudos for making sure the man didn’t end up bug juice on an ambulance windshield.
Right?
Filed under: Daily Prompt, Writing Stuff
