The Golden Hour

A couple of days ago, an ordinary incident changed my life. I had gone to the market to buy some groceries for my mom. After buying them, I turned to go home.

I was lost in thought because the next day was my math exam. My dad had given me a really complicated problem, that I hadn’t been able to solve, and I was pondering over it.

I was thinking so hard that I forgot the route that would take me home. I entered a small bylane by mistake. Cries of ‘Buy your vegetables here!’ and ‘Fresh hot coffee!’ arose from all over.

The vendors’ cries snapped me back to reality from the world of Simple Equations, and I turned to look for the right route.

Suddenly, something lying on the side of the road caught my eye. I went towards it, and it turned out to be an unconscious woman’s bleeding body.

“Oh my God, this is Trishika’s mom!” I cried. You’re probably wondering now who Trishika is. She’s my best friend, so when I saw her mom’s condition, it shocked me.

The distressing thing was that no one even spared her a second glance. I sprang into action.
Luckily for me, there was a telephone booth nearby. I called for an ambulance quickly, and then phoned Trishika and my family and told them where I was and what had happened. My mom and dad said they would reach the hospital in five minutes.  I cleaned Trishika’s mom’s wounds as best as I could.

After this everything became a blur. The ambulance arrived and carried away Trishika’s mother.
We met her an hour later in the hospital, where we were told that she was very weak, but out of danger. That gave me a lot of happiness and relief, but I was overwhelmed with guilt when I realised that had it not been Trishika’s mom lying there, and had it been a total stranger, I might not have stopped to help. Then and there I took a vow that whenever anyone is injured and I can do something to help, I would do all I could to lessen their pain.

The next day after my (very easy) math exam, I met the principal and told him about my idea. He liked it a lot and described it to the other students at the morning assembly. The idea gained immediate approval. We started a campaign on First Aid.

I was happy that a small incident could teach me such a valuable lesson.