Don't be afraid: BY ACCIDENT

At the corner of Pulaski and Southern, just as the green light is turning red, a big man, black, his head shaved, crosses over to my side of the street. He is going in the same direction I am going. Every step of his is two of mine. He reaches the bakery before I do, stops, looks over the sweets in the window and goes in. I decide to skip it and use the opportunity to get ahead of him, reach my bus stop at Hampton before he does. My bus is due in eight minutes but is usually off schedule.

 

The sun has not yet set. Rain clouds darken the sky. Hurry, I tell myself, the bus shelter will be filled. It is. The ladies have furled umbrellas. I don’t have one and don’t even have the donuts I had wanted to buy. With little choice, I move to the curb, right next to the bus Stop sign. A lady with a large, heavy shopping bag, a plastic rain hat tied under her chin, accidentally bumps into me. My knees buckle. The street comes up and smacks me in the face. Everything dims for a minute. I blink and am aware of my position, cars are approaching. Trying to stand pulls a scream from my throat. Somehow using my elbows and the little strength I still have, I manage to sit up. A red car brakes just a few feet away from me. My voice is weak. The people still in the shelter are oblivious, blind to my danger.

 

There is no time to pray. Rain falls in sheets. It splatters the streets and me. Big hands lift me as if I were a downy feather. A deep voice orders those standing around me gawking, to move, move now. The black man takes his cell phone from his jacket. I hear him give explicit directions to where we are, what he thinks has happened to me.
‘Don’t worry, Miss. Help is coming.’ From a leather briefcase that I hadn’t noticed before, he removes a yellow legal pad and pen. The bus is filling. The big man gets on. The door does not close.

 

I am left alone waiting for an ambulance. The traffic light turns green for the bus but it does not move. It sits there thru another green light. Riders talk to the driver and sit down again. At last my Savior gets off the bus.  He brings me the card of the woman who accidentally knocked me into the gutter. With it is a list of pertinent witnesses with all details written clearly. His black  broad hand reaches my small white one. We shake and introduce ourselves.

 

The ambulance takes me to the hospital. I’ve never been in one before and was entertained with jokes by the medic who sat beside me. All that had to be done, forms filled out,  x-rays taken and read, a cast bigger than I expected covered my toes to the middle of my tibia.
Jerry, my special other, comes racing into my temporary room, almost cries when he sees me. A nurse pushes my wheelchair to his car.

 

As soon as we get to my street, I see the big bald man sitting on my front steps. In one hand he holds a bouquet of dahlias. In the other, his brief case. Helpful again he only needs Jerry to steady the chair while he takes the brunt of it with me  yelling, ‘Be careful. Be careful. I don’t want another cast.’

 

Jerry makes coffee, offers a hard drink to the man I now call, Mr. Morrison. He says coffee will be nice and asks to be excused for a moment. I think he wants to use the bathroom but no, he goes out to his car and returns with a large white greasy bag that I smell a
 as soon as he comes in the door. Jerry gets a large platter from the cabinet and puts out only part of Mr. Morrison’s dozen and a half assorted donuts.

 

We eat. We enjoy, We laugh. We talk and we sign a paper making Mr. Morrison our attorney to handle my suit against the lady who accidentally knocked me over into the gutter.