No Superhuman |

"Art...Walk." by intellichick/flickr

This happened on Halloween weekend 2010.  It was one of the situations that inspired me to make nosuperhuman.com.  There’s nothing more amazing than a group of strangers coming together spontaneously to help another.

L.A. Willing
By Charity C. Tran

I had never seen that much blood before.  

It was bright.  Against the dark street pavement, it looked almost like it had the consistency of paint – nothing like the thick, dark liquids shown in transfusion bags on television hospital shows or the stuff that stains white sheets red in crime TV.

He lay on the ground, visibly shaken and injured.  

I had crossed the street when it had happened.  I saw him suddenly keel over a trash can.  A homeless man – dirty, ragged – had been beside him, talking to himself as he left, blurring my view of it.  

Walking closer, I thought that the man might have had a seizure.

He was wearing a sports jersey and looked as if he should be watching a game at the Staples Center, enthusiastically cheering on the Kings or the Lakers, not lying injured on the street pavement of Flower Street.  

It was a miracle that the man hadn’t been hit by car.  The 7th/Flower bus stop is home to a busy intersection of buses and cars.  He had fallen in its one-way street right-turn lane in the middle of rush hour of Halloween weekend.    

Already wearing my earpiece connected to my phone, I immediately asked if they needed me to call 9-1-1, ready to press the touch-screen to dial.  But I didn’t need to – I had arrived within seconds of the man falling, but there were already two other people making calls on their cell phones.

As the man laid there, still dazed from his fall more than whatever ailment had caused him to fall in the first place, strangers took care of him.

A bicyclist stood by him, knelt down and told him to keep still.

Meanwhile, a man on the phone was explaining where we were and what had happened: “A man fell down.  He hit his head – I think he might have had a seizure.  We’re at 7th/Flower…in Downtown.”

As he talked, the telephone man created space to divert traffic, waving cars by and letting the drivers know they couldn’t merge into the side to make right turns or drive straight through.  

Cars passed.  

Buses passed.  

Some drivers peered out of their windows at the scene outside and drove on.

The fallen man laid still for most of this, but – despite protests from everyone else – he eventually brought himself up from the pavement to sit down on the side.  The splattering of his blood on the pavement remained like a signature of where he had been.  

As he sat up, there was a search for napkins.  The man who had called 9-1-1 handed the bicyclist a napkin from his pocket, but the bicyclist claimed it was dirty.  

A stack of white paper towels emerged from the crowd. 

With the stack of white papers pressed against his face, the fallen man mumbled, “I need to take my pills.”

A woman with curly gray hair ran into the Coffee Bean next to us and got a cup of water.

The man with the bicycle then moved to help divert traffic; he turned on his blinking red bicycle light and directed the light toward incoming traffic while a few feet away from the man.

Despite the telephone man’s emphasis that the people on the phone had advised the man not to take water, the fallen man drank the water anyway and with a handful of pills.

As we stood there, almost like characters in a play where an LA city street held center stage, people continued to cross the street.  

A woman asked, “Is he okay?  Did you call 9-1-1?”

The man who had called said everything was fine and he had already called.

“I think he’s like my brother,” the man with the bicycle observed to me, finding familiarity in the situation.  “He probably had a seizure.”

The fallen man acknowledged that he had seizures in a silent nodding way.

The bicyclist looked at me as he continued, “My brother is 40 and still doesn’t always take his pills.”

The fallen man asked for more napkins and I volunteered, rushing into the Coffee Bean to find a stack of brown napkins.  But when I arrived outside, the ambulance was coming through.

“I need you guys to get out of the way,” the ambulance driver said.  His tone differed from the rest of us; it was gruff – almost annoyed.

The woman who had gotten water asked if I was waiting for a specific bus.  

“Oh, I’m okay.  Don’t worry about me.”  I was actually an hour ahead of my schedule, but I was pretty sure everyone else wasn’t.

The ambulance’s arrival brought us back into real time.  The bicyclist left, letting the 9-1-1 caller know.  

“Hey man, I gotta go.”  

They shook hands.  

He and I waved each other good-bye.

I walked away to take the 460 bus and found myself sitting near the woman with curly gray hair.

We sat talking about public transit and how some people feared it without seeing the positive.  We both had observed how many people tried to help, how many people asked if 9-1-1 had been called, how it all came together.

“You definitely get crazy people,” the woman observed, “but you also get really nice people…people who are willing to help.”