Worked from home today.

Went to Safeway on what was my supposed lunch hour to get some groceries and such. Right in the middle of my shopping, walking down an aisle looking for a replacement air freshener for the downstairs bathroom, I walked into an uncomfortable scene: there was a woman in her 60’s who seems to have collapsed. Yep, right in the middle of the bleach and soap aisle. At the other end of the aisle, by the end-caps, there were two customers and a checker gawking at this poor woman. Well I ran down and see if she’s conscious and responsive (she wasn’t) and called 911 on my mobile phone. I explained the situation to 911-lady. I was getting a little impatient at the lack of an authority figure (E.G. the store manager) so I shouted at gawker-employee to get his manager. 911-lady was directing my through some actions while she dispatches EMS and then I noticed that Poor Woman looked like she was coughing up blood; she wasn’t breathing very easily, either. She was on her side, sorta face down and I didn’t want to move her in case she had a broken hip or something. By this time Mr. Store Manager showed up and just my luck Poor Woman seems to have stopped breathing. Great. I really didn’t want to perform CPR/mouth-to-mouth on a woman whose mouth was full of blood… Well, I kinda slapped her face a bit and she started breathing again… thank God. 911-lady had me roll Poor Woman onto her back and hold her head back to see if her breathing got little easier and wait for the Fire Dept. Great; wonder how far they are. At this point, I was really starting to hate how small cell phones are and how it’s impossible to ‘shoulder’ them to keep your hands free. It looked like she bit her tongue. I didn’t know if it was from when she fell or if she was having a seizure, or something.

Fire Dept showed up, asked me a couple questions about Poor Woman and released me.

As I was checking out, Mr. Store Manager came up and thanked me for ‘doing the right thing’; I mean, who wouldn’t… besides the infuriating gawkers, that is. He told me that EMS thought she had a diabetic attack.

The whole thing lasted less than 5 minutes. I really hope she is alright; downside is, I forgot the air freshener.