Just when you might start to doubt humankind…

Here’s what happened to John a couple of days ago, on Sunday, April 6/25:

This is John, my dear husband. Let’s back up a bit. I offer you a rough timeline of Sunday and Monday.

• Sunday 9:00 a.m.: Paratransit (a transportation service run by the STM – Société de Transport de Montréal, free if you’re over 65) picks up John and brings him to Trinity United Church Montreal in the Rosemont area, where he sings in the choir every week. He has a lovely tenor voice. When they get there, the driver dutifully walks him to the door.
• Sunday 1:00 p.m.: John’s now hungry! He decides to leave the church and go get a hot dog at the restaurant three short blocks away, figuring he’ll get back in front of the church in time for the Paratransit driver, who’s due to pick him up at 2:00 to drive him home.
  • But one problem. Well, two. No. 1) John has Parkinson’s disease. That means that lately he’s sometimes unsteady when he walks. He tends to lean forward, speeding up. He fell a few weeks ago, in March. Broke his glasses. Luckily he was alright, apart from a bad forehead scrape. So we’ve bought him a walker; but it seemed defective, so he only used it once. We planned on returning it, to either get it fixed or exchanged. In fact we were going to do that the next day, Monday!
  • Therefore, problem No. 2) – Sunday he didn’t have the walker with him. Oh, he didn’t fall on the way to the resto – miraculously. However, on the way back… well, you can see the result, above. 😬
• 1:45 p.m.: A mere half-block from the church, fifteen minutes before the Paratransit driver is due to pick him up, John takes a tumble on the sidewalk… next to – onto – a low picket fence. And one of the pointy ends digs into his eye. See result, above. He’s now on the ground. 😰
• 1:46 p.m.: Cue two drivers – angels 😇😇 – who witness his fall. They immediately (John tells me later) pull over and park, and dash over to him. They use tissues to stanch the blood, call 911, gather the broken pieces of his (new since a previous fall) glasses and put them into a bag for him, along with another packet of tissues and his phone. And then they stay with him until the ambulance comes. John tries to phone me to tell me what’s happened, but his screen is illegible in the bright sunshine and minus his glasses, so one of the Good Samaritans manages to phone me on her own cell, and tells me what has happened. I am shocked – I thank her profusely. In my distress upon hearing this news, I unfortunately don’t catch her name. We wait; we don’t yet know which hospital the ambulance personnel will take John to; they will decide.
• 2:00 p.m.: Meanwhile: after I toss on some clothes, I call the pastor of John’s church. I’d texted him to let him know what happened. He is very disconcerted. He also mentions that the Paratransit driver is there now to pick up John! I ask the pastor to relay the news, which he does.
• 2:15 p.m.: John phones me from the ambulance! He tells me what has happened. He sounds perturbed, perhaps somewhat sheepish. (If it had been me I’d be crying my eyes out!) But John is quite the stalwart type. Stiff-upper-lip ancestry, you know. 😊 … I worry about his eyesight. And whatever else may be going on in his head. He says he has a headache… 😳
• 2:17 p.m.: John has told me which hospital. I grab my purse and water bottle and call a cab.
• 3:00 p.m.: I arrive at Hôpital Notre-Dame in east-end Montreal. I’m a bit leery since it’s very French-speaking, and my French is so rusty. But I know that Francophones appreciate our efforts, when we at least try. (Also, in my experience, they often switch to English if they really can’t stand my poor accent!) My encounter with the security guard at the entrance to the Emergency Department is not a problem. A big ‘n’ tall Black guy, he’s nonchalant, friendly, a little apologetic, while checking my bags and doing the once-over of me with the metal-detector wand. (Wow, when did hospitals start taking all these precautions, I wonder?) The guard and various health-care workers give me directions as I thread my way along the winding corridors of this huge E.R.
  • Finally I come upon bed #53, upon which rests my lovely husband John… whose face is a tad less lovely! (See above.) We are super happy to see each other! Careful hugs and kisses ensue.
• 3:00–7:00 p.m.: John is okay!! The kind eye specialist says so, after his eye tests. His CT scan (eye, head, the whole shebang) is clear! John jokes and says, “Just as we suspected: no brain!!!” 🤣 He also later adds, “It’s a good thing the sidewalk was there. It broke my fall.” You can see why I love him.
  • As the hours go by, many different workers greet and attend to John, some with clipboards, some with stethoscopes, etc. Doctors, nurses, aides, orderlies, all seem to have some purpose for seeing him – and he’s quite visible, since his bed is literally in the hallway, directly across from the nurses’ station.
  • Every worker without exception is kind, amiable and gentle. One of them is adept at cracking jokes – although I miss some, since my French comprehension is not good. But whenever I ask a nurse or doctor to explain something important I miss, they repeat it for me in their not-so-good English without any complaint or animosity. So here’s a shout out to Hôpital Notre-Dame for their fantastic E.R. staff and service. 😇😇😇😇😇😇😇😇😇😇😇😇😇😇😇😇😇😇😇
  • Oh, and supper is brought for John, and for me too! This is unexpected, so nice! (The actual food is… a tad better than nothing, let’s just say. Hey, nothing’s perfect! 😅)
  • As we’re leaving, I profusely thank our young ‘main’ nurse, Jessica (who sports a most impressive tattoo sleeve on one arm [a fierce dragon!] and has multi-coloured hair up in a bun), for her extra thoughtfulness and attentiveness to John. I tell her in my poor French that she’s an excellent nurse, truly the best, and we really appreciated her care. Her eyes glisten.
• 7:30 p.m.: The taxi takes John and me home, and does it better than the one who took me to the hospital. ($15 better! This driver knows the good shortcuts. 😄)
• 8:00 p.m.: John is feeling a lot less achy – the two Tylenol that nurse Jessica gave him helped. We relax now with some TV and try to go to bed early – which for us is 12:30 a.m. instead of 1:00 a.m.! (We’re night owls, not morning folks!) We have a big day tomorrow.
• Monday 12:00 p.m.: John is looking even more colourful! Check out this purple! An ice pack is suggested to him, to prevent swelling. But he waves it off, saying, “Nah, it’s swell.” 🙄😂

• 12:30 p.m.: After breakfast we head out on our first errand. We need to call a cab, since there hasn’t been enough notice for us to reserve a Paratransit driver. But we soon discover that the driver of this taxi also happens to drive part-time for that service! And it turns out that he has driven John (and me, as accompanying person) before!
  • The nice driver puts John’s darn walker into the trunk. (It’s the reason for this little trip to the pharmacy where we bought it.) On the way there, John begins to tell him the problem with the thing, something mechanical…? We plan to have it exchanged for a new one or perhaps get a rental. But then the driver says he’s fixed such walkers before, for many other Paratransit clients, and…
  • Next thing we know, we arrive at the pharmacy, the driver retrieves the walker and would you believe it, he fixes the thing, good as new! 😮😮 We’re flabbergasted! He’s another angel! 😇 This is the walker! Fancy, huh? 😃

• 1:00 p.m.: We’re thrilled! The driver just saved us from having to deal with the store. And the walker is a sparkling new aid John will use next time he’s out! We thank this fellow profusely and say, “Maybe you wouldn’t mind taking us to our next errand?” We tell him about John’s glasses, broken from the fall, and give him the address of the optometrist; it’s in the same neighbourhood. He agrees immediately to take us, folds our walker and stows it in the trunk.
  • In the car we become buddies! His name is Samson. I put his phone number into my phone. We chat about this and that, until we arrive at Lunetterie Monkland, our wonderful optometrist’s place. We climb out, as Samson lifts our amazing walker out of the trunk and opens it up.
  • To our surprise, when John tries to hand him his Mastercard to pay, Samson refuses to take it! “Oh, no no no,” he says, backing away, his hands up in defensive position. He leaves us staring at him, open-mouthed, as he circles around to the driver’s-side door. “It’s my pleasure. Have a good day.” Samson speaks with an accent, possibly Middle-Eastern, he’s an immigrant from somewhere around there, perhaps. And he is most definitely an angel. 😇
• 1:20 p.m.: At Lunetterie Monkland, we talk with one of the technicians and show him John’s mangled glasses – which by the way we just bought there one month ago after the previous fall John had. 😬 We are fully prepared for a big credit-card expense. What can ya do? We gotta go with the flow. But guess what!
  • The technician comes and says the glasses were under warranty! (The frame, that is.) One lens is still okay. The other is scratched, but still usable. He transferred both the lenses into a new home – another pair of frames, a duplicate of the one that broke, so that’s great, because we really like how it looks. 🤓 Thanks, dude! 😇 So we leave there with John’s ‘new’ glasses, they’re fine for now, and we head over to a nearby coffee shop to ‘celebrate’ with coffees.
• 2:00 p.m.: In the coffee shop. Wow, the place is busy and noisy, so many people, lots of chatter, folks in twos and threes, some singletons busy on their laptops. The tables are very close together, there’s not much room to pass between them. We spot a table with room for two, but it’s a really tight squeeze to maneuvre into the seats, because of John’s walker. (Did we think of folding it? Er, no.) Anyway, the lone bearded guy at the table offers to move over with his computer, phone, note paper, the lot – and now we have room to spare! Another angel 😇, thanks so much!
• 2:45 p.m.: At the bus stop. We strategize. We’ve never gone on the bus with the walker before. Suddenly it looks as big as a car! How are we gonna get it on? Who’s gonna fold it and when? And who should get on first? Who should show whose bus pass first and – Whoa! The bus is here before we get to make all those decisions! We wrangle the darn thing (half-folded) on somehow, together, using brute force!
  • We dutifully show our bus passes and start to proceed towards the rear. But we take no more than one step when suddenly the driver stomps on the accelerator and we lurch backward, almost falling over, and we would except for another angel 😇, a young fellow who grabs hold of John who in turn grabs hold of me and I am grabbing John who has a tight grip on the blasted (albeit lovely) walker…
  • Immediately, two more super-angelic people 😇😇 give up their seats for John and me! We smile and nod weary thank-yous at them.
  • It’s our stop! We reach the door and wrestle the walker (which seems as big as the bus itself now) down off the step and onto the sidewalk. But it’s still folded! We try to open it but forget how. Yes, we should’ve practised how to do this! But we didn’t. Sigh. After much struggle we get it open. Whew! Or as John would say, Phew! 🤣
• Sometime after 3:00 p.m.: Home! Exhausted, or as I like to say for fun, exhaustipated.

In my humble opinion, though, the biggest angel 😇 is my husband, John. And I love him to bits.