The Kindness of Strangers

How often in this busy city of 10 million or so people are you likely to see someone stop their car in the street and rush to the rescue of a total stranger who has just fallen on the sidewalk? Even better, in that city of millions of people with different backgrounds, cultures and languages, how likely that the “rescuer” will look at the wife of the fallen one and say in surprise “I know you!”

To be perfectly fair,
I should slow down right now and tell you that Gene is perfectly ok, except for some amazingly colorful bruising on and about the grapefruit-sized lump on his head and the Florida orange sized knob on the knee. The shoulder is not broken. Neither is it dislocated or otherwise permanently damaged.

All of you who know us well know that one of our ongoing projects is to visit and report on at least one medical facility in each country we visit. Other than my fascinating 2-week stay at Hospital San Carlos in Madrid, I can't say that any of our research has been interesting enough to justify the pain and expense and complications of travel plans. Actually I can't say that the Madrid experience was worth it from the point of view of those things either, but it certainly was an interesting experience. The Buenos Aires research was especially disheartening, given the many extremely high scores the city gets from us on just about every other level. But then, back to the subject at hand...

The cutting from the tree pruning really did jump right up and grab him by the ankle. I saw it. It could have happened to anyone. But he fell so fast and so hard once it grabbed him and the rest of his body kept going, that it was totally startling. He was walking and then he was lying face down on the concrete sidewalk, clearly in pain and apparently unable to move. There was the usual rush of observers rushing to his aid wanting to help him by lifting him up. As I kept insisting to them that they not touch him, while trying to ask him if he could tell which parts of his body were hurt, a voice appeared asking in English if we needed help.

George had been driving down the street when he saw that someone was face down on the sidewalk and heard us speaking English. He was on his way to the same restaurant that we had been headed to. His Dad is in town visiting and needed a milk shake. “Cuatro D” has delicious ice cream in a huge selection of flavors, including things like lucuma as well as double chocolate chip brownie coffee gelato. His Dad had decided he needed a vanilla milk shake. But then George heard someone speaking English and realized they were in trouble.

At the hospital – a different one than the one we checked out when we were here last – George helped us to get checked in to Emergency and stayed with us for close to an hour to make sure that Gene got seen by a doctor and that everything seemed to be ok. Meanwhile at home, his family waited. It hadn't really clicked in my brain yet that the dinner that his wife and visiting parents had waiting at home was the traditional North American Thanksgiving Day Feast. But I think it was. If his wife and new baby forgive us, I think we've found a new friend.

Hospital Clinica Anglo Americano is a very sleek and modern place. Although we were there for 2 or 3 hours, I didn't really get a sense of the place, isolated as we were in the Emergency Department. But it didn't seem busy. No one seemed rushed or panicked. It's not where the real emergencies – or the destitute – normally go in times of crisis. For them there is the public hospital across town, where I'm sure the crowds and the waiting and the panic are like any big city hospital anywhere. Anglo Americana had this feeling of total calm. That's what struck me the most. The two doctors that saw Gene spoke English, which was very helpful. The other medical people did not, but that didn't really matter. He had an MRI of his head, X-rays of his shoulder and knee (which 2 hours after the fall suddenly swelled up as huge as the head bump had been before the icings) He was declared not in danger of death or incapacitation, given prescriptions for pain killers and antibiotic cream, told to continue icing every half hour and call the main part of the hospital tomorrow to go in for a follow up visit.

Did I mention that George had put his Dad in a taxi and told the taxi driver to take him home so that he could stay with us a while at the hospital? Dad speaks no Spanish and is visiting for a few days. I hope George remembered to take him his vanilla milk shake. Oh, and the “I know you” comment? From conversations on an online Peru expat group. He immediately recognized me and remembered some of the conversations I had been involved in with the group. I used to question the common sense of including a photo of oneself when participating in online groups. In this instance, I think it turned out to be very helpful. It was immediately as if we already knew each other and had sat in each other's living rooms having conversations about our wide-ranging interests. We don't form friendships and get to know people in the same way that Grandma did. Sometimes that's a good thing.

Guess where he wanted to go afterwards!