One heart cuddle

I knew what I wanted to achieve when I left my provincial city, a harbour of the Danube from Romania's South-East. That place couldn’t offer anything from the long list I had in mind, and I couldn’t wait for an opportunity to break out. When that came, I started my journey in the outside world with enthusiasm and a fierce ambition to make it work. Of course, I’ve had no idea of the obstacles and harsh surprises waiting hungrily for their prey, and where all that trip into the unknown would lead me. I packed my things, left in a hurry to the train station to catch the train to the capital, and so the big adventure began.

Three years later, it was crystal clear what career path I wanted to follow. However, as the things started to unfold, it came out that I had to move for short term to a city on the other side of the country, in the lovely realm of Transylvania. I had to implement a project, volunteer for a while and get a bit of training at the best emergency centre of the local hospital.

Great, another trip, another move – that’s all right at 20 something years old, it added even more flavour to the adventure. My enthusiasm was still in full blossom. I found a young lady, Neli, to share with a comfortable new flat in a safe area, a kindergarten job that allowed me to go ahead freely with my volunteering and training at the centre. The prospects looked quite good. Embarked on a solid ship, I was heading towards my goal in full speed. The wind was blowing encouragingly in the exact direction I wanted and thought it was the right one. Everything was perfect – until one stupid frosty morning.

In the night before, I was a full-time volunteer in that A&E centre. It was a tough shift, and I couldn't close my eyes even for a few minutes or get somewhere for a short break. People came in and out, one drama after another, and when the morning finally arrived, I was exhausted. Despite all the exciting things happening around, when the end of the shift came, I was happily anticipating a good sleep at home, so I changed quickly and went outside.

It wasn't my first night shift in a hospital since I worked as a nurse for more than three years after high school. My body always reacted to lack of sleep with hypothermia, and I was used to that sort of reaction. The only small difference was that the temperature never dropped too low in my city while I was on my night shifts. Somehow, because I knew the area well, I managed to dress in tone with the weather. If I ever made a mistake, my parents would correct and equip me with an extra layer of clothes.

That morning, what I was wearing was not proper winter clothes, but more like for late summer. When the fresh air met me, I realised that it was freezing, it was purely awful. I wasn’t at all ready for that. My hypothermia combined with that frosty weather made a cocktail which I was about to drink to the bottom of the glass and get one of the most horrible experiences of my life.

I went to the bus station – it was too early, and the station was empty. After five or maybe ten minutes, I started to feel anxious. I was moving around like a lion trapped in a cage, while my skin was turning blue, yellow, red and who knows what other colours of the spectrum. I was living too far to walk the distance, but it was no sign of a bus. However, I decided to wait – wrong decision! I stayed and waited until I got completely frozen. I think my brain was frozen, too. Finally, with the last drop of rationale and will, I figured out that it was better to walk, no matter how long it would take. I guess that thought saved me; otherwise, I would have collapsed there, like a frozen statue, right in front of the hospital.

I was near the city centre station when the bus arrived, after around 20 minutes of walking. I couldn’t speak anymore. I got in, but no seat was empty, and while standing, I could not feel my legs, hands, face, and nothing. A bit later, I started to feel something, a pain like the claw of an angry cat in my heart – getting stronger and stronger. I never felt something like that. 'What on earth is this? I'm too young for that.' Fear, then panic, grabbed me. I started to cry. I couldn't breathe anymore, and tears began to roll down my cheeks.

By the time I arrived in front of our block of flats, I was almost in shock. I was like stuck in a big storm and snow on K2, not in the middle of a city. People were walking by with no idea of what was going on with my body. I don't know how I managed to climb the stairs, but I vividly remember banging at the door furiously. Luckily, my flatmate was at home. She came quickly and scared to hear that unusual noise. She knew me as a decent person, but at that moment, I knew nothing about decency or manners, I just wanted to survive.

Once she opened the door, I jumped with my last resource of strength to the cooker, which happened to be turned on, and I lifted my hands towards the flames. Big mistake! I retracted my hands immediately, yelling. I started to cry uncontrollably. 'What's going on with you?' Neli asked. I began to jump to the left and the right like a drunk fly, not knowing what else to do. 'I'm cold, so cold, and I've got a sharp pain in my chest' I managed to whisper. She looked at my terrified face and tried to stop me. Eventually, she grabbed my hands in her hands and started to massage my fingers, one by one. It seemed too slow for me, and I was about to lose my patience. It didn't seem to work, nothing worked. I was breathless and in complete terror. I was about to push her aside, and she felt that she realised she had only a few seconds left in her attempt to help. Then, the miracle happened.

She took both hands in the nest of her hands, and pushed them on her chest, right on her heart, keeping them tight, while coming closer. At that moment I stopped any move, I got speechless, and suddenly my eyes met her eyes. That gesture shocked me so much, that completely took over the shock of hypothermia, the panic, and pain. I didn't expect anything like that. Nobody ever in my life did that to me before.

I looked into her blue eyes, and something so warm and inexplicable started to embrace me. That blue was filled with immense compassion, with calmness, with serenity, with an assurance that I so much needed to hear without any words in those critical moments. 'Calm down; it's going to be OK, breathe slowly. This is going to pass, and everything will be fine.' In that deep silence, I could only hear one thing: her heart beating regularly. While listening to that, my hands got slowly warmer and warmer, than my feet, than my tears stopped, and then my heart started to beat naturally, too.

And that was it. It worked.

For sure I said ‘Thank you’, then we moved on, we didn’t comment on it at all, as nothing happened. I survived. However, somehow that gesture stuck into my mind. It was too special to forget. Neli was only a stranger – we weren’t even friends, and I couldn’t understand why she did that. I wondered if I would have done the same thing, and I strongly doubted my capacity to generate such a noble impulse.

However, since that day, my body was never the same. I became susceptible to cold. My extremities started to react to every small fall in temperature as I would live somewhere in Alaska. I could not wear anymore thinner clothes, but always more layers than the other people around.

Some years passed since that event. Life was getting tougher around, my trips became more numerous, and it was raining with problems and obstacles. I was going in circles, with no signs of reaching anything I wanted.

Thus, one day I decided to go to a camp for young people to take a break, get fresh air, and a new perspective. I was still in Romania at that time. It was the last day of that year, and the camp organisers proposed a hike on the mountain. I decided to join the group; it was a sunny day, perfect for a walk, but quite frosty.

We started to climb, and the sceneries around were beautiful. I felt OK, it was freezing, but my many layers of clothes and the physical effort were doing a good job. I was enjoying myself when, suddenly, something distracted me. Somebody close to me started to complain loudly to another person nearby. 'I'm freezing. I can't feel my legs and hands.' I looked in that direction, and I saw a teenager, clearly getting anxious and uncomfortable. He didn't stop, and his voice got a bit louder and shaky, a sign that his distress was increasing. His face was turning purple, his eyes looked scared. I came closer to him as a magnet attracted me, and I started to stare at him. I could see that his clothes were not suitable for the weather and he didn't have any gloves. Suddenly something clicked in me.

‘Excuse me, are you cold? What's going on with you?' I didn't bother to introduce myself; I didn't feel it was time for courtesy. I stopped him with my arm and looked at his face carefully. He nodded and showed me his hands. 'I forgot my gloves at the motel.' He was shaking already.

Quickly I grabbed his hands into my hands and started to massage finger by finger, and blowing warm air into them. He got shocked, silent for a while, then his eyes kindled and began to talk with me. People passed by, and I could feel them staring at us, better said at me, but I didn’t care about that. I kept doing my job until I could feel his hands getting warmer.

‘Now, come on, take my gloves and my scarf, and let’s move on, a bit faster.’ ‘How about you?’ he said. 'I'll be fine, I've got very thick clothes, and I'll use my pockets, don't worry.' We kept walking while talking and getting to know each other. His voice and face returned to normal; he was smiling and progressively returned to a good mood, too. By the time we reached the motel, he was cheerful and perfectly fine. I left him, and I returned to my room, filled with joy.

That evening, reflecting at what happened, I remembered Neli and her gesture. I thought that her act of kindness impacted me only for that moment in the past, but I was wrong. That day on the mountain, when I took that teenager’s hands into my hands to warm them up, proved that she taught me a lesson for the rest of my life. Because of her simple gesture and her warm heart, my heart was able to click and connect to a similar need of a stranger, too, and I could follow in the same steps of action. She helped me answer much more than an immediate need. She led me to become a different person on longer-term, towards a change I could have never accomplished otherwise.

In my country, there's a saying: 'One flower doesn’t make a spring.’ Well, that’s true, but one simple, genuine, kind deed, like the one I was lucky to experiment many years ago, did make spring from winter in my life. I can only be grateful for that!

You know, when I left my city and started my journey to follow my ambitious dreams, my list was all about what I’m going to do (such as pursuing a successful career) and what I’m going to have (a big, fat bank account for instance), but nothing about what I’m going to become. It took only one heart cuddle to open the eyes of my soul and switch the compass of that ship I was embarked in towards an entirely new direction.

And since then, I’ve learnt many more lessons, through many other small and big gestures of generous people I met in my journey: what means to be hungry and be fed, to be thirsty and get a glass of water, to not have a job and get advice on how to prepare for an interview, to not have a place I could call home and get accommodation for free while I was a student with no money, to feel lonely and get an encouraging word, and so on.

If you're asking me now what I've managed to do and what I've got so far, I can't say much as I'm not that impressed about these chapters, though they still matter. What matters to me most, especially in hard times like these we live nowadays, is who I've turned into, and what I'm changing towards every day. I can only hope I’ll never forget all the lessons, and I’ll never stop becoming somebody else, till one day I’ll reach the best version of what I can be.

Therefore, while you go along in your daily routine and if you ever come across somebody in trouble and may think you've got nothing to offer for sorting out the problem, remember: you've got at least a heart, and sometimes, what it takes to change the situation towards a beautiful outcome, it's only that: a simple, warm, heart cuddle.