Selah // Something Witty

The hand of life is reaching out, to rid me of my pride.

Date: 10.06.18 -- Day 91 ("30-Day Blogging Challenge ON HIATUS"  -- Day 6)
Music: "Still Feel" / half.alive


Prompt: Write about a memorable encounter with a stranger.

I can feel a kick down in my soul
And it's pulling me back to earth to let me know
And this heart that beats inside of me will show
I still feel alive

Probably my most memorable encounter with a stranger happened when I was studying abroad in Belfast, Northern Ireland. During the summer program at Queen's University, I was not only provided lodging in the dorms, but a free breakfast every morning as well. A full Irish was amazing. At first. But after the second week the thought of all the meat and other lovely rich foods for another meal seemed more daunting than climbing Giant's Causeway again. So I tagged along with another student from my program to head to class early so she could use university's wifi and I could catch up on some reading in the empty classroom.

Interestingly enough, the room was not empty when I entered. That day we were having a guest lecturer, a famed anthropology professor who still dragged his old-school projector up three flights of stairs at the ripe age of 80. He was my mentor's mentor, so I was excited to meet him, but I had been briefed ahead of time that he liked a few quiet moments to set up before engaging with students, so I greeted him quickly, politely and took my seat in the back.

It was a nice silence as he set up and I read. The quiet was disturbed when the professor accidentally passed wind. At the time, I giggled a little in my book, but said nothing. In a way, it made the mythical man more human. There's more room on the outside, as my grandfather used to say. In hindsight, I should have known better; for in a few moments after the disturbance, I happened to glance up as the professor lost his sense of balance, took a few staggered steps to the his left, and promptly collapsed on the floor. He was having a heart attack.

Like I said, in hindsight, there are so many things I wish I had done differently. I ran down from my seat, checked the back of his head for blood, and uttered the inane words -- "are you okay?". He couldn't respond, only look at me in fear. I cushioned his head with my scarf, reassured him that I would get some help, and run out of the classroom in the hopes of finding someone else. Here was when panic set in. I circled myself three times trying to best gauge which class I could disturb to find the right person. Luck would look favorably upon me as a woman would come out of the classroom, introduce herself as a doctor, and the moment I heard that, I grabbed her as politely as possible to bring her into the room. From there, I dashed downstairs, alerted the staff as the emergency services number seems to have flown out of my brain when I needed it the most (it's 999; I have it burned in my memory now), and they called for medics. I also seemed to have forgotten my class number, which meant I needed to run back up the stairs find it, run down again to wait for the medics, and led them up the stairs once more.

The other program professors, including my mentor, had arrived by the time we made the final march upstairs. I watched as they needed to revive him and rushed him to the hospital. At some point, I had to tell them all what had happened. They offered to let me head back to my dorm room for the day, but whether it was the adrenaline or the crash that immediately followed, I opted to stay in class. I don't remember a damn thing about the lesson. The only thing running through my skull was OMG, OMG, OMG like a ticker tape stuck on repeat.

My mentor, thankful for the rescue of his mentor, offered me a case of Guinness after classes ended. I took it, drank a can and promptly gave one to the rest of the crew on study with me as the urge to get drunk was way too appealing. The incident earned me a reputation and horrible nicknames. I often was the sober walking companion to other fellow non-sober classmates, so many called me Shepherd. (Nicknames were an unofficial part of the program.) After the professor's heart attack, they called me AH-HA, Action-Hero Heart Attack. It was really bad. I declared over the gifted Guinness that all of my emergency cards had been used up and that anyone potentially experiencing a medical emergency needed to stay at least five yards away from me. This would be a running joke for the rest of the summer. It would seem my luck would hold as there were no more heart attacks or other medical emergencies.

When my father skyped me later that night, unexpectedly from my grandparents house with my uncle and cousins, I appeared to be drunk as I was pretty thrashed from the crash of adrenaline (and mortification as my father could care less how I looked; my grandparents, however, had opinions). When I relayed the story to them, I immediately when was bombarded by the doctors. I felt like a med student on rounds with all the questions thrown my way. To this day, I'm pretty sure my uncle just thinks I was on a bender and made up the story to cover. As you do.

Thankfully, the professor survived. While I didn't visit him in the hospital for fear of bringing up a bad memory in his fragile state, I did send flowers, which I heard later seemed to perk him as it was a first for him. He went on to continue teaching, although mercifully, two of his TAs began the process of converting his slides into digital format so he didn't have to carry the projector around anymore. He sent me a lovely letter a year later; I often wonder how things are with him now.

And thus the end of my most memorable encounter with a stranger.