In the ongoing excitement and chaos of early voting at the library one of the elderly patrons went down, and they went down hard.
I think maybe people are out of practice for being in public and managing themselves in crowds. By all accounts this person was agreeably vertical, waiting to vote, and then, poof, she was horizontal.
There was a lot of blood. Tons of blood. Gallons of blood. So much blood that Vampires a thousand miles away sleepily sat up in their coffins and said "Wuzzat?"
Sharks' noses twitched curiously in the far away oceans.
"I'm fine." Burbled the woman through the gouts of blood pouring from her. "I'm fine!"
And she was. She just hit her nose, which then spurted several pints of blood onto our floors.
But enough about all the blood already!
We cleaned it all up, and where it was wet from the cleaning an A-framed "Caution" sign was placed.
Almost immediately a weary patron leaned on the caution sign for respite and then crashed to the ground as it gave out under them. There was no blood. The patron seemed fine.
"Aarrgh!" The patron cried. "Call an ambulance!"
So we did, and the ambulance came and wheeled the patron away.
At that point I was expecting a whole grimly madcap day of patrons collapsing to our tiled and concrete floors in a copious series of bloody and technicolor disasters, but it didn't happen. Which I suppose is just as well really.
Later in the day I may have seen a couple sharks mooning about curiously outside, but I can't be certain. Sometimes my imagination runs away with me.
But at least nobody fell down the dreadful stairs?
ReplyDeleteI was walking my mother from a parking lot into a restaurant some years ago, when she was in her 90s. She misjudged the ramp cutout, tripped, and fell like an axed tree. The manager saw this, came out to check, and insisted on calling 911--to my mother's horror. They came, checked out her bruised elbow and broken glasses, and finally left when she absolutely refused their help. She would be in the first category of you examples.
I visited a library yesterday that had stairs from the basement to the second floor. Short flights with landings, and railings on both sides. Perfect! Yes there was also a tiny elevator. Stand by for a couple of new posts, probably on Friday.
Don't hold your breath, blogspot isn't letting me edit.
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