He Made a Full Recovery
So let me tell the story of how my friend saved a boy from a mistake his grandmother made. Two weeks ago, said friend and I went to the cinema to watch Glass. We get in line at the snack stand behind an older woman and a little boy, I’d guess he was four or five years old. She tells him, “You can have anything you like, just pick! But don’t tell mommy!” This was a red flag to me being a lurker over here. Anyhow, the boy picks a Mr. Tom bar, which is peanuts covered in caramel/honey (?) or some such sugary glue. Does anyone see where this is going yet?
The grandma gets her stuff and pays, and they go toward the staircase leading to the theaters and we order our stuff. By the time we’re done, I had pretty much forgotten all about them. But when we got halfway up the stairs, all heck broke loose. The boy suddenly falls down in front of us, the grandma a few steps ahead of him. At first I thought he just tripped or missed a step, but he was coughing. We didn’t notice right away as we were chatting, but my friend worked in childcare before and crouched down to help him up.
He looks at her and tries to say something but can’t get a word out. The grandma gets upset and tells my friend to step away and tells the boy to get up. My friend says: “I think he has trouble breathing.” “No way, he just fell and is upset, get away!” in a ticked-off tone from grandma. The boy now starts wheezing and putting his hands to his face, the candy bar falling down. Now, at first my friend thought a piece of the bar went into the wrong pipe, and patted the boy on the back quite heavily. As the wheezing gets worse, my friend realizes much faster than me what is going on and tells the grandma: “He can’t breathe, is he allergic? Do you have an epi-pen or medication?” She loses it and starts crying because she doesn’t have anything with her.
My friend shouts to the crowd that a child is having an allergic reaction and if anyone has an epi-pen. A man comes running with a pen and she administers it. By this time a crowd has formed, but everyone is just standing and staring while the grandma is crouched next to the boy, crying over him. My friend has to remove her to give him space to breathe. I am frozen in place, completely useless. My friend looks at me and pretty firmly tells me to call an ambulance. I would have botched that too, if the man on the line didn’t remain calm and talk me through what he needed to know.
About five minutes later (man those were long) the ambulance arrives and takes the kid away. My friend offers to drive the grandma to the hospital. Now, the rest of this is hearsay, as I can only report what my friend told me went down. In the car, my friend tells the still sobbing grandma to call the boy’s parents. She says, “I’ll call my son.” As my friend tells it, she could hear the father scream through the phone that he and his wife told her multiple times about his allergy and if the kid died, that was on her. At the hospital, my friend left her information with one of the nurses in case an investigation was going to be done. She then quickly got out of there because the parents arrived and a shouting match with grandma ensued. So why am I telling this now?
Today, the mother and the little boy called my friend and said they would like to send her a thank-you card for all her help. The mother said that the boy made a full recovery and she was grateful for her son’s life. After a few questions, it became clear that the little boy is not allowed to be alone with grandma from now on and he got his very own cool backpack (Batman) with emergency medicine! Happy ends for all! Story credit: Reddit / Wiyohipeyata