A Bloody Encounter on an Otherwise Beautiful May Morning

This morning I was driving out of the parking lot at 7:20 headed to work when I saw a guy with a cane, perhaps mid-60s, sitting on one of the big boulders near the entrance to the parking lot. He was hunched over, looking fatigued. I wondered from a distance if he was having breathing problems. 

As I drove slowly closer, I saw a massive amount of blood. There was blood all over his beard, torso, legs, and the pavement, streaming down from his head. I rolled down my window to speak to him.

As I was trying to understand what had happened, it was clear that he was equally dazed. I was about to say, “Sir, did you fall?” and then thought it better to say nothing. That was what had happened.

I put my car into park, grabbed a pack of wet wipes that I keep in my console, put my flashers on, and got out and mopped him down as best I could, trying to stop the bleeding. A tremendous amount of blood was coming from just a small gash on his forehead. The entire right side of his face was covered in blood and it was dripping into his eye.

I went back to the car to get a clean napkin, which I thought would be better for stopping the bleeding. I sat and talked with him for about 5-10 more minutes, cleaning as I went. He wanted to get right up and just walk across the street to the apartment building. I asked him if he lived there and he said no, and that he was helping a friend to move.

Internally I thought to myself that he was in no position to help anybody move anything! 

He said that he and his friend, who was an army medic, were moving out into the countryside. This was believable since I live only a few miles away from an army base on the outskirts of town, and there are many military members in the apartments near me. 

We chatted for awhile and I remarked that he may need stitches, but he told me this has happened to him before (!) and they have told him that the skin is too fragile to stitch. 

Once he was mostly clean and we had stopped the bleeding, he was eager to get going. He reached down and gathered all the bloody wet wipes. I protested that he should leave them there. He said, “I can clean up after myself! No one wants handicapped people leaving litter everywhere!”

I tried to insist that he let me walk him across the street, as the morning sun was blinding. He didn't want me to do that, but he did thank me for my help, and I waited while he crossed the road safely.

This was only the second time I’ve seen that much blood in real life. The last time was only a month ago, when I was walking a local 10k, and I had to step over a rivulet of blood that was streaming ten feet away into the gutter from the head of a large man on his back (a race participant) who was surrounded by others who were helping him.

Two primary thoughts went through my head after this encounter, on my drive to work. 

One was that my schedule was a bit different than usual this morning, and I’m glad I was there to help. There were only two other vehicles that left the parking lot during this time. Perhaps others wouldn’t have helped. Who knows.

The second thought is that I wonder if more people are losing their already fragile balance these days due to covid vaccine-induced POTS. Some of these incidents could obviously be fatal.