7 June 2017 / leggypeggy

Hit by the proverbial freight train

buses, crime, criminals, injuries, teenagers

He came out of nowhere. In fact, I didn’t even see him coming. It was only later that I even learned it was a him.

We were in the Brussels North bus station trying to find our bus to Paris. There were plenty of Flix buses around, but none heading for Paris.

Poor John did a fact-finding foray and then I set out on one.

I’d gone maybe 50 metres when I was hit by a freight train, or what seemed like a freight train. I’d still be lying there on the ground if three kind people hadn’t helped me to my feet and collected the things that slipped out of the side pockets of my backpack.

I was so dazed, I have no idea what people were saying to me, except I knew they were trying to be reassuring and helpful.

I staggered back to where Poor John was standing. I was breathless, hunched over, hobbling, in shock and probably fairly incoherent. He asked, Did that guy hit you? I saw him running and thought he’d knocked someone over.

It confounds me that Poor John always manages to miss these attacks on me. He was walking in front of me when I got hit by a motor scooter in Hanoi four years ago. It was going the wrong way on a one-way street. He said he heard a whoompf. When he looked back, he didn’t know if the sound had come from me, the woman who hit me or the crowd. At any rate, I was the one lying on the ground.

You can read about that disaster here and here.

Anyway, we’re still not sure what happened this time. Poor John had a look around and saw that one teenager had been grabbed and was being held by the police, but probably wasn’t the one who barrelled into me. Most likely, the pair had committed some crime and were being chased by the cops.

All I could do was sit on the pavement in a sort of stunned silence until it started to rain. We moved to a bit of shelter and the bus came eventually. It’s probably good that I had four hours of just sitting quietly on a bus.

So here I am with wounds all over. I don’t even know which side the guy hit me from. My whole right arm is wrenched. Did he hit me there or are the injuries from the fall. Still deciding whether my right shoulder is dislocated and whether my right thumb will regain function. My left hand, left thumb and left knee are going to be okay.

Thank goodness, I didn’t hit my head or lose a tooth. Yay!

But if you don’t hear from me much over the next few days, I can assure you that typing is a challenge.