I was with my boyfriend at the park, enjoying the warm, breezy afternoon.
We were sitting on the grass, laughing over some inside joke, when a woman appeared out of nowhere. She looked to be in her late 30s—calm but with sharp, alert eyes that scanned everything.
Without saying a word, she walked straight toward me and pressed a sanitary pad into my hand. “You need this,” she said softly but urgently, her tone slicing through the laughter like a knife.
I blinked at her, confused. “I’m… sorry? I don’t—”
But before I could finish, she gave me a brief, meaningful look and walked away briskly, disappearing into the weekend crowd.
My boyfriend laughed awkwardly. “That was weird,” he said, shaking his head. I nodded, trying to brush it off, but something about the woman’s expression stayed with me. It wasn’t embarrassment or confusion—it was concern. Almost fear.
Still uneasy, I excused myself and went to the restroom to double-check. No period. Nothing out of the ordinary. I sighed, feeling silly for even checking.
When I came back, my boyfriend was gone. His jacket was still on the grass, his phone beside it. I called out, thinking he was playing some dumb joke. No response. I called again—nothing. My stomach tightened.
Then I noticed people gathering near the edge of the park, murmuring in alarm. A small crowd had formed by the sidewalk. My heart started racing.
I pushed through, and that’s when I saw him—lying on the ground, motionless. A car had jumped the curb minutes ago, hitting the very spot where we had been sitting.
If I hadn’t gone to the restroom…
My knees gave out. A paramedic was already attending to him, shouting for space. I stood there frozen, clutching that unopened sanitary pad in my hand.
The woman’s words echoed in my mind. You need this.
Later, after things calmed down and the ambulance took him away (he survived with minor injuries, thank God), I looked everywhere for her. The woman who’d appeared, warned me in the strangest way, and vanished.
No one had seen her. No one knew who she was.
To this day, I keep that sanitary pad in my drawer—not because I needed it, but because it saved my life.
