By Raimond Gaita
Do angels exist? They must, because I’ve seen them. Three in fact. Better than just seeing them, I felt their gentle touch as they cared for me lying injured on the footpath. They told me their names: Kaity, Tayla and Fleur.
I don’t know exactly what happened. Perhaps I was briefly concussed, or just in shock. I was coming home from a long walk last Friday night along St Kilda beach around 10pm. I crossed the Esplanade, headed for the footpath opposite the Esplanade Hotel, then tripped over the gutter.
Raimond Gaita with three women who came to his aid when he fell outside the Esplanade Hotel last Friday: Kaitlyn Puleio, Tayla Shreeve and Fleur Ritchie.Credit: Simon Schluter
Instead of falling straight away, my legs moved involuntarily fast for a few steps. Maybe it was an instinctive effort to regain balance, or perhaps it was just Parkinson’s out of control, but in a split second I realised I was about to fall, hard. My face scraped on the asphalt as I skidded along the road.
I tried to get up but couldn’t. I thought of the distress my wife, Yael, and my children would suffer. They have been anxious that something like this would happen ever since I was diagnosed with Parkinson’s. Then the angels came.
Raimond Gaita after he was injured in a fall outside the Esplanade Hotel.Credit: Yael Gaita
I can’t remember if I got myself onto the footpath or if someone put me there. “Stay back. Keep away from him. Don’t touch him. He might have injured his spine. He mustn’t be moved.”
That was Kaity. That evening she was the manager on duty at the Espy. Her knowledge of first aid was formidable. More impressive still was her capacity to put it to good use. “Oh my God!” I heard someone shriek when they saw my face. Wounds there can bleed profusely. “A cupful,” Kaity told the woman who answered her call for an ambulance.
She stopped the bleeding, cleaned my face as best she could, and got a pillow to place under my head. From my medical ID on my phone, she found information that enabled her to care for me, confident that she would not make things worse through ignorance of my various medical ailments.
During this time, I became aware of the presence of Tayla and Fleur. Tayla had seen me fall. “You hit the deck really hard”, she said. She enjoyed using the expression “hit the deck”, which she repeated a few times, with a gentle laugh intended to reassure me because she assumed I would recognise in the tone of her laugh her belief that I was basically OK.
Yael and I live nearby. I asked if someone could tell her what had happened and pleaded that they reassure her. Merely hearing that I had fallen would put her in a state of near shock. Seeing me lying on the footpath, with a bloodied face, unable to move would be traumatic. Fleur went to our home.
When she brought Yael to where I lay, I heard her say: “Yael, keep standing. Don’t bend to him just yet. Wait a little.” I think Fleur and Kaity were holding Yael upright. I was moved by their wise compassion.
Kaity asked someone to bring a chair from the Espy. Yael sat in it holding one of my hands, while Fleur moved back to her position sitting behind my head to hold the other. Alternately, they caressed my forehead.
Fleur told me that her father had Parkinson’s and had died the week before. She suggested I create an Advanced Care Directive. That sounds like a grim conversation, but it wasn’t. We talked about many things on that footpath, Yael, the three angels and I. Some were personal. It often happens among strangers in situations when strong emotions encourage conventions to take a break for a while.
All this time Tayla stroked my back to comfort me and prevented me from rolling back onto the road where cars were doing three-point turns. Kaity stood on the kerb to make sure they didn’t hit Tayla or me. “Better me than you,” she said. “If it’s me, they’ll know about it.” She repeated this when Yael wanted to stand there for the same reason.
It continued thus for almost two hours. Poor Tayla and Fleur. They had come for a night out at the Espy, but instead, sat on the footpath for almost two hours, ministering to the needs of an injured old man who they did not know, waiting for an ambulance that did not arrive. Around midnight, I urged them to go home. Reluctantly, they did.
The “angels” – Fleur Ritchie, Tayla Shreeve and Kaitlyn Puleio – as they looked after Raimond Gaita.Credit: Yael Gaita
I had been lying on my side. I said to Kaity that I had to move because the pain in my hip would soon be unbearable. “If I move,” I continued, “I may as well see if I can stand up, and if I can, walk home.”
I stood up, but Kaity insisted I sit in the chair while she cleared the footpath of blood-soaked dressings, towels, the pillow and all the things that the Espy had provided for my care and comfort. She then escorted Yael and me to our front door. As she left she told us emphatically that we should call her any time, day or night, if we needed help.
Raimond Gaita was reunited with his rescuers – Kaitlyn Puleio, Tayla Shreeve and Fleur Ritchie – outside the Espy last week.Credit: Simon Schluter
Once inside, the ambulance operator to whom Kaity had spoken phoned, apologising many times that no ambulance had come. When I said, “It’s OK. I’m not an urgent case,” she took a deep breath before she replied. She then thanked me, apologised again, and offered a free taxi to a hospital of my choosing.
Yael drove me to hospital where scans and X-rays showed I was indeed OK. Kaity, Fleur and Tayla texted her the next day to ask how I was. Tayla has a beauty shop and Fleur a cafe a few doors down from her. “Don’t worry, Rai,” Tayla said, looking at my face. “I’ll re-beautify it for you. Then Fleur will give you a coffee. Yael too.” Fleur agreed enthusiastically.
One day soon, Yael and I will again be the beneficiaries of their generosity.
Raimond Gaita is a Melbourne philosopher and writer, and the author of books including Romulus, My Father.