AN UNFORTUNATE ACCIDENT
The pain was
unbearable. Two people dressed in white stood hovering above me. They seemed to
be talking about me. Suddenly, I remembered I was at the shopping mall when
three boys ran down the escalator. What had happened? A split second later, the
answer came to me: I had fallen down.
Realising
that I had woken up, one of the persons in white – the doctor – said gently to
me, “Don’t worry, you’re alright. Your baby is okay too. Of course we’ve to
wait...”
Filtering
out the doctor’s words, my mind tried to fight through the fog of pain and
recall the events that had taken place barely an hour again…
Festive
songs filled the air and Chinese New Year’s decorative items were hung everywhere.
I was shopping for baby items for my child who was going to be born in two
months’ time. I decided to go to Children’s
Accessories to buy some baby
clothes.
The sound of
laughter reverberated down the escalator. Looking up, three boisterous boys
came into view. They tore down the escalator that was travelling upwards and
paid no heed to the other users on the escalator as they wove in and out of
them. One of the boys narrowly missed colliding into a smartly-dressed young
man who scowled at their dangerous behaviour. I spotting an elderly man who was
bewildered by the ruckus that the boys were causing. The other shoppers were
aghast by the boys’ reckless behaviour but they did not care. I stopped at the
foot of the escalator and stared mouth agape, worried for their safety.
However, the
mischievous boys ignored all the attention they were getting and continued
their unruly behaviour until a security guard was alerted. Pointing a finger at
the little scamps, he shouted at them to stop. “Hey! Boys! Stop right there!”
he hollered at the top of his voice. But it was too late. One of the boys was
only a few steps away from me. At first I was too stunned to move. Finally when
I realised that he was going to crash into me, I started to move away. But being
a heavily pregnant woman, I was too slow and clumsy to move quickly enough to
avoid him.
“Aargghh!”
the boy and I screamed together. He barrelled into me and I lost my balance. I
crashed onto the ground and a sharp twinge of pain lanced the region of my stomach.
But I knew it was not my stomach. It was my baby. My mind was muddled by the
excruciating pain but vaguely, I was aware of someone rushing up to me, asking
if I was okay, someone speaking urgently into a phone or a walkie-talkie,
someone else shouting… I tried to fight the pain and hang on to consciousness
but eventually my vision blurred and I blacked out.
“Madam, are
you okay?” It was the doctor who realised that my attention had wandered away.
His voice snapped me back to the present. Feeling worried for my unborn child,
I whispered weakly, “My baby?”
“Yes, both
you and your baby are fine. Fortunately, someone at the scene, the security
guard I think, called the ambulance and we managed to get you to the hospital
in the nick of time…” Once I knew that my baby was unharmed, relief washed over
me like a warm bath and I relaxed, allowing my mind to wander again. This time,
I made a mental note to thank the security guard when I was discharged. As for
the boys, I hope they had learnt a lesson and would not behave so recklessly
again in the future.
Tan Wenxin (P6)
Northland Primary School
The
merit of this composition is its unusual point of perspective. The writer wrote
from a first-person perspective and the narrator is a pregnant woman – a choice
that few primary school children will make.
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