Saving one life at a time

Yesterday I was at a one-day meeting in Vienna. The meeting organizors provided a light lunch in the hall of the majestic building. Andrea*, a colleague, stood next to me, close to the table with finger food, sampling among the choice of mini meat skewers, wiener schnitzels, pizza rolls and so on.

I turned to her to say something and to my horror there she was clutching her throat, not able to bring out one sound but looking at me with big scared eyes trying to indicate she is choking. I did not wait a second. I grabbed her around the waist and bend her over slapping her hard on the back between the shoulder blades. She was like a rag doll hanging forward, not a sound.... It seemed endless. There were other people around us but I lost every notion of the surroundings. I just focussed on helping Andrea and went on and on.

Suddenly a piece of chewed meat dislodged from her throat and fell on the floor. But her tiny body remained floppy and she still did not utter a sound. So with even more force I alternated pushing up her diaphragm and slapping her on the back, trying to remember my first aid course, but knowing at the same time that every second counted and that I should not stop.

A few seconds later a bigger shred of meat dropped out of her mouth and, yes, thank god, she started breathing again.

Andrea stammered that she knew what was happening as soon as it occurred. She thanked me.

"Lucky I was next to you," I said, trying to take some weight off the situation.

"Andrea, I had never thought I would get an opportunity to beat you up!" I added jokingly.

A woman showed up with a mop to clean the floor and the situation turned back to normal.

I suddenly realized that from now on my relation to Andrea would never be the same. I had saved her life!

Later that day, after the meeting, I had a flight back to Switzerland.

It was almost midnight when I took the train from Geneva airport to the city centre. The Cornavin train station is the most dangerous place of Geneva, especially at night, and as usual several obscure figures, possibly robbers and drug dealers were lingering in dark corners.

The travellers who descended from the train rushed to the station exit and nobody paid attention to the ordinary looking man who was sitting against the wall in the hall, frantically trying with a paper tissue to wipe off the blood that kept oozing out of a wound on his forehead. A scooter was lying on the floor next to him. I could not help myself but needed to go over to him to find out if he needed help, while continuously scrutinizing the area behind and around me to make sure that this was not a trick and that there were no thugs closing in. Fortunately the dark figures in the shadowy corners did not move.

"Do you need help? Is there anything I can do for you?" I repeated my question to the bleeding man. "Should I call anyone?"

"No, thank you. You are so kind," he replied in a soft voice. He managed a weak smile.

I was not convinced he was ok, but I did not want to hang around any longer in that station hall and thus accepted his answer for what it was. I had already saved one life today, and maybe I saved my own by quickly making my way to exit of the station, which now felt unnervingly creepy with all the travellers gone....

*Name changed for privacy reasons