I get up, as usual it's 5:05AM, a bit groggier than usual because I had late evenings since Thursday night and early mornings Saturday (Hockey practice @ 9AM, up at 7) and Sunday (Hockey game @8AM, up at 6) so Sunday night I tried to go to bed early but failed for several reasons.
Wound up sleeping 4.5 hours between Sunday and Monday bringing my total sleep since Thursday to Monday inclusively to a whopping 15.5 hours.
I get on the bus at 6:48AM, wearing my sunglasses, not shaved, still groggy even though I had a coffee and breakfast.
The bus is a mini-bus with about 20 seats arranged on either side so that the people sitting on them are face to face in two rows, there is a final row of seats against the back wall of the bus.
I sit on the second seat on the left when I enter the bus. Across from me at a slight askew is sitting a lady that I chat with occasionally on the bus, she is in her fifties, brown short hair, pudgy nose, big brown eyes with seemingly too much make up.
She is wearing the same brown coat she wore all winter along with a pair of gloves she found in the metro.
To her right is a Facebook friend of mine, I met him on the bus and we chatted on the train a few times in the morning, he also works in IT and we usually will chat about video games, hockey, the odd kids story.
To my left sits a teenage girl, clearly a CEGEP student she is about 18~19 years old, brown long hair, pretty face if slightly on the heavy side she is very doable.
Right away I notice something is off, normally the older lady and my Facebook friend are already chatting away when I enter the bus. This morning they are completely quiet, my Facebook buddy has a worried look on his face.
At another stop a few minutes from mine enters an Asian woman in her thirties, she never speaks and even when she boards the bus in the evening with her spouse, a Caucasian man in his late forties, she never speaks with him. She is short with big thighs and legs. Her hair is black and straight like a classic Asian. She has a red purse and is listening to some music on some earphones.
As usual she goes right at the back of the bus and sits by a window on the rear seat.
I'm sitting there, slight headache, putting away my opus crap card when all of a sudden the lady in front of me starts gagging like she's about to throw up.
Immediately I look up at her, and start looking for a container, there is a garbage in the front of the bus next to the door, I start to get up and at the same time she throws up, emptying her stomach right on the floor between her and the teenage student to my left.
The bus is turning a corner as this happens and I'm thrown backwards back onto the first seat. I grab the handrail and use it as a hold to allow me to stand and finally I start reaching for the garbage can, it is small and white with a white plastic bag in it, it's otherwise empty. As I pick up the can the lady begins a second wave of barf-o-rama. By now the student is trying really hard not to look at her, I'm also trying to avoid but once you see it, it's hard to unsee it.
I place the garbage can on the floor in front of the lady and look for some tissue paper, the student sees me looking around and points out a box on top of the driver's mirror. I ask the driver if I can hand it to the lady and he acquiesces. I am about to hand her the Kleenex box just as she starts a third and final wave of barf-o-rama this time through her nose.
She starts bleeding from the nose. Hard. So I give her the box and instruct her to blow her nose gently to remove the residual vomit from it, and then keep her head up and back.
By now we are all standing in a pool of brown vomit with pieces of what seems like toast in it. The smell of bile and coffee is not pleasant but bearable, partly because it's cold and partly because of the adrenaline.
A few moments later we get to the train station, the lady is sitting there looking sorry and she keeps apologising, I reassure her that it's not going to be held against her and we all make sure she can make it back home with the same bus. She assures us that she will be fine and we head to the train.
That same evening as I boarded the bus I asked our bus driver how it went and he told me that he dropped her off in front of her house in the morning. He had to hose down the inside of the bus then give it to their maintenance crew for them to sanitise it.
It smelled like vanilla!
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