The lady on the hill

I was walking home from work, slightly stumbling because I have a blister right on the ball of my foot. Just as I was passing Holyrood House, its tall iron gates like those out of Willy Wonka’s factory, I saw an elderly lady in a wheelchair.

She mumbled at me. I smiled. And to my shame I was ready to keep walking.

‘Can you help me? My taxi hasn’t come and I need some help’

I realised that she meant she wanted me to push her wheelchair. Part of me wanted to keep going, the other couldn’t believe that I wanted to say no to an elderly woman who was stuck. As I was thinking, and still painfully shuffling along, she turned the wheelchair around and followed me backwards.

‘OK, how do I handle this thing? How do I get off the kerb?’ I asked.

‘I’ll give you help’

So she directed me and a few moments later I was pushing her up a hill. I saw a group of four mildly amused students watching as my body crouched over in the effort.

‘I’ve got a sandwich for my tea and cold meat for the cat’
What’s your cat’s name?’
‘Coco’

An image of a chocolate coloured cat sprang into my mind, excited by a slice of ham, or even better potted meat.

‘Where are you from?’ I asked.

She mentioned a distant part of Scotland and starting to talk about her husband. It was at this point I couldn’t work out if the cold meat was for the cat or her husband. I couldn’t hear her properly for my own breathing and the busy road.

‘Sorry’ I apologised for nearly pushing the lady into an overhanging branch.

‘Don’t worry about me. This is good, this is good. I like talking to trees, I like talking to twigs, and I talk to everyone’

I looked into her plastic bag that was open. It seemed full of milk cartons, perhaps for Coco. She seemed to be well packed and organised. Everything she needed for a day out.

We were now going down a hill, and I could feel the wheelchair tugging at me, my hands beginning to cramp in their tight hold. Worryingly the wheelchair started to veer towards the right, but I managed to pull it back.

Again we went down a kerb, the lady telling me to turn the wheelchair round and go backwards.

She laughed ‘I’m teaching you things today’.

Finally I got her home.

‘I’m going to have a sandwich and he’s going to have cold meat’. She said as she went through the electronic doors of her sheltered housing.

Five minutes later as I was getting closer to home my blister started to sting, nagging me to stop. I realised then that it hadn’t hurt at all when I had been pushing the lady up the hill.