Sometimes, You Just Have To Suck It Up And “Work There”

Since becoming an adult, I get almost one “I Don’t Work Here” incident a month. This is my second ever incident and one of my most cherished memories.

This happens in the early 2000s. I’m a third-year nurse student in the capital. I’m sharing my apartment with a good friend and he is sharing his car. The car is of a brand cherished by taxi drivers and it’s yellow, the color of taxis in the capital. The major differences from a taxi are that it lacks the “TAXI” sign and that it is a hatchback; taxis are sedans. It is common for someone to flag us down, thinking we’re in a taxi until we came closer.

It is summer and my friend is island-hopping with his fiancé and they have left the car behind. I wake up to an almost empty fridge, and since I was paid yesterday, I decide to forgo the small convenience store in my neighborhood and drive to the big supermarket. I jump in the car and take a major road artery to the store.

I’m stopped in front of a bus stop, waiting for the light to turn green, when the back door opens and closes and I hear a woman’s voice.

Woman: “[Hospital], please!”

I turn around to say it’s not a taxi, but I stop in my tracks. A sweet old lady has entered the car. She is around sixty-five or seventy. She is clutching her purse so hard, her knuckles are turning white. She is clearly panicked. She keeps mumbling.

Woman: “Please hurry! She went into labor! Please hurry!”

I put the car into gear and starts driving towards the hospital. Nurse training kicks in and I start to talk to her to calm her down. She starts to calm down and I get the whole story. Her granddaughter, who’s nineteen, is pregnant and has had a rough pregnancy. An hour ago, she went into premature labor and the grandma is panicking.

We reach the hospital twenty minutes later. The guard at the entrance knows me, because of my hospital rotation. I drive up to the entrance and drop her. As she is trying to pay me, I tell her it’s on the house. At that point, she realizes this isn’t a taxi and gets a bit embarrassed. She tries to give me money again. I advise that if everything goes well, we should send me a cake. Little did I know…

Two weeks later, my roommate is back and receives a call from the police. They want to find out if he is the owner of the car and if he could go to the station.

Roommate: “Um… did anything happen with the car while I was gone?”

I say no, having almost forgotten the incident. I decide to tag along to the station. We are met by an officer who guides us to an office. Inside is the sweet old lady with a box. She jumps up.

Woman: “That’s him!”

And she hugs me. The officer is smiling. He is the father of the granddaughter, and now he’s a proud grandfather. Apparently, the lady told him about the incident and how helpful I was. He used his status as a police officer to get the plate from the CCTV and find the owner and thank me. The baby girl would have to spend some time in the hospital, due to being almost two months early, but otherwise, she was all right. So, I got the cake.

I actually met the girl by coincidence a couple of years ago. She has turned out fine and is studying to be a nurse.

This story is part of our Feel Good roundup for November 2020!

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Read the Feel Good roundup for November 2020!