(Anything heavily caffeinated drives up my anxiety, but French Vanilla, as my friend calls it, is just "sugared water" so it's a trade-off.)
It was dusting rain droplets on the downtown core-- nothing heavy, just light layers sprinkling down from a salt and pepper sky. The walking pavement was stained two tones darker, remnants of the day's rains.
With my medium French in hand, I went to open the door when I noticed a heavyset woman sitting on the ground with her back to the glass door through which I could see her.
She kept adjusting her position on the ground, kept squirming, shifting her weight onto one buttock, then the other, and then the other again, seemingly unaware and/or not caring that her buttcrack was in full view of the Sparks Tim Horton's.
Homeless people often squat around Bank St, I've noticed (greater business? Hitting a better target market?). This was just another one, but it was weird how she was sitting directly in front of the main entrance.
There was a foot between the door and her immobile body, allowing me to complete the careful task of extricating myself from the door.
I saw then that the woman was shifting because her body was rocking, moving, squirming, her entire body tensing and loosening, tensing and loosening.
Her shirt was too white- she couldn't have been homeless- and her face was ruddy and moist (from sweat? From rain?), contorted. There are three tattooed stars on her upper arm.
"Are you... alright?" I ask her.
"Not really, no," she said, voice tense and terse, "I slipped. I hit... my leg."
I crouched down (and what I noticed when I did is that, suddenly, other passersby began "to see her", to clump together in groups and pairs to make a small crowd around us: an unending Greek chorus barrage of "Are you okay? Are you okay?"), and through clenched teeth, she told me that she slipped trying to go into Tim's and that she was here with an event.
She showed me her leg: a large bruise was beginning to flower purple and green on the outermost side of her left leg.
Various people offered their hands and shoulders and she refused them until a construction worker and a businessman offered their shoulders in tandem-- gently, gently they managed to pull her up, allowing her to put some weight on her injured leg, but her face collapsed and she fell heavily back on the ground.
"I can't stand on it!"- Her voice was becoming panicky- "It hurts so fucking much. Just get me my partner please."
A girl, whose long, wavy hair I had noticed before me in line, wordlessly offered her empty hand and without thinking, I gave her my French.
I was running down Sparks, my feet sounding rapid hard "pat pat pat" on the cobblestone (I'd long ago worn to the hard plastic soles of my flats). A man wearing glasses and a white Polo emblazoned with that Egg lobby group I see everywhere ("Get Cracking?") strode toward me and thinking he was the partner, I told him that "a woman had fallen and very badly banged up her knee."
He wasn't. We split ways here and he turned around to get her partner at a white tent some metres away while I headed back to the woman.
By now, harsh expletives were puncturing her sentences ("It really fucking hurts! Fuck, it hurts so bad!"), her face was tight and twisted. A pair of older women were standing to her right, telling her she needed an ambulance and another one, younger, was asking her shrilly, "Are you okay? Are you okay? Omigosh?"
Her partner arrived, 911 was dialed (which I should've instigated 5 minutes ago), and I went inside to tell the servers to block off the entrance (which I should've done immediately).
Inside: I advised the server to block off the entrance, or at least to make them aware that something was happening.
He stares at me blankly: "Should I get the manager?"
"Sure. Just letting you know what's happening."
Beside me: a construction worker, still with his hard-hat on, waiting, sneered-- "oooooooooooooooooh bossaaaay"
I can't remember what happened after that, only that I was standing at the edge of Bank, waiting for the walk sign to pulse green, feeling the lightest of mists dusting my face and hands, clinging to my lenses, staring into the glass windows of the Three Brewers on the ground floor of the CD Howe Building, thinking That's why they wanted to ban bossy.
(As I always do at the end of the day, I debrief myself on what happened that day and what I learnt, which was this on that Thursday:
- Learn first aid.
- Just because you are an improv actor, just because you create stories and can think on your feet relatively well does not free you from the very human errors of waffling. I waffled-I hmm-ed and haw-ed- when I should've called the ambulance right away, should've cordoned off the section immediately, should've gotten ice, and should've sent someone else to get her friend. When I'm in a scene, when I've been given my prompt, my entire body is tense muscle, skin and bones, waiting and eager to respond (I'm a better foil than instigator). But I wasn't expecting anything-- I didn't anticipate, wasn't prepared. What does that mean for the next time?
- I understand why they wanted to "ban bossy". I get it now. )
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