Avoiding Deadpool

On holiday, beside the pool, my partner slipped on the marble poolside. While I am a qualified first aider, I am disabled, and was therefore unable to move to get supplies as I was not in my wheelchair. Luckily, I was close to where my partner fell.

Immediately after he fell, three or four people came to us. One brought towels to stop the bleeding as there was an awful lot of blood from his head wound, another found the first aid kit, and a third found the resort first aider. It was obvious my partner needed an ambulance, and that was arranged. While we waited, I needed to collect passports and visas for insurance purposes, and this man who we had never met before, another holiday maker, held my partner’s head together and staunched the bleeding while someone else helped me to my wheelchair so I could collect the necessities.

When I arrived back at the scene, I found just a pool of blood; my partner had been transferred to the ambulance, strangers had gathered our things into bags and put them in the ambulance for us, and they stayed to help get me and my wheelchair into the ambulance and even offered to come to the hospital with us to help at the other end.

The fact that these strangers were willing to get covered in blood and take time out of their holiday to help us made the experience much less terrifying, and meant I was actually able to get my partner the treatment he needed and come to the hospital with him.

His head injury was less severe than it appeared, but he still needed surgery. He came back to the hotel with me and was recovering well when the strangers who helped us came to check in and see how he was doing.

The moment in the ambulance when that stranger clasped my hand and told me it would be fine made me believe in humanity again.