Last week, my sister and 10-month-old nephew were visiting, and I was acting as proud tour guide. On the last day of their visit, the weather looked iffy, so we decided to skip our stroll along the beach and instead head for Montjuïc, a large hill overlooking the port, decked out with beautiful gardens, Olympic sporting installations, a castle, art galleries, funiculars and gondolas. We metroed via Sagrada Familia (which some pyromaniac had torched the day before!) to Paral·lel, the end stop on the “lilac” metro line. Two female tourists walked just ahead of us along the platform. They were roughly our age (or “young,” as I like to say; that is to say 40-50 years old ;-). We were focused on our kid in the stroller, also looking ahead of us to locate the elevator, when suddenly one of the women just collapsed, as if her power cord had been unplugged…dropped like a rock to the platform.
I ran forward the few metres to where she lay, and the friend had also turned and was with her, trying to “awaken” her. A red-sweatered metro employee happened to be nearby, saw it happen, and was on the scene quickly. I held the woman’s head and body as we tried to check if she was breathing, had a pulse, etc. There was no sign of motion or anything in her face, she just lay there looking absolutely peaceful. That may sound nice, but given the context it was terrifying. Thankfully, she did seem to have a pulse, and we sent the metro guy off to call an ambulance. I turned out to be a relatively helpful person to have on the scene, since I spoke both French (the womens’ language) and Spanish (the metro staff’s language), and could “mediate,” although I found my French frustratingly elusive, getting all mixed up with Spanish in the stress of the moment. Still, it was clear the friend was very glad to have someone else there.
She kept stroking her unconscious friend and softly repeating (in French): “Come on, Ellie, don’t leave us now, come back to us, come back, don’t leave us now…” A noisy metro came and went. After a long while (as thoughts of strokes and heart attacks loomed large in my mind), her eyes started to flutter, like she was in REM sleep. Later, more metro staff arrived, helpfully scolding gawking bypassers (“Vamos, ¡no es un espectáculo!“) and basically giving us room as we waited for the ambulance staff to arrive. The red-sweatered man wrote down the woman’s passport info to pass along to the medics.
At one point I was handed a cordless phone, to speak with an ambulance dispatcher, in my role as the woman’s Spanish-speaking “partner.” I explained that I didn’t actually know her, was just there by chance. Then I passed along what little we knew, some comments from her friend, and relayed a few instructions back (mainly: don’t let her try to stand up). After being out for maybe five (long!) minutes, the woman gradually regained consciousness, and thankfully seemed to be able to speak, know who she was, etc., although in a groggy, dream-like state. She had been quietly sitting for quite a while by the time the ambulance folks arrived, which seemed like the proverbial forever, maybe 10 or 15 minutes after the call. My little nephew patiently slept through all this, and my sister was able to provide a wet-wipe towel for the woman’s bloody hand (she cut her hand on a ring when she collapsed). Anyhow, we stayed around until the real help arrived, then moved on to our day’s other activities, which thankfully were much less exciting.
It was a scary experience, and I felt a sense of serendipity that we were there and able to help, seemingly the right people in the right place at the right time. But also I felt somewhat inadequate, that somehow I should have done more, should have stayed longer (even though the friend thanked me and said it was okay for us to leave), should have been more quick-acting, more sure of what to do. Basically, it scared me, but at least I acted and did not freeze. It also made me think about similar events with friends and family — strokes, heart attacks and other collapsings. In the end, it seems the woman probably “just” fainted from some major recent family stress in her life, and was lucky not to hit the ground too badly and cause further trauma. But it was a good reminder of why it’s good to travel with someone who knows you, who can look out for your best interests. I would hate to think of something like this happening to a solo traveller in Asia, anywhere that communication with local people is almost impossible in the best of circumstances. Or even at home alone, when no one is there to see you fall, no one is there to cradle your head and coax you back to life. Very scary.