One evening, Jack was walking down the street when he saw a woman struggling with her stroller. It looked like it had broken down somehow. Jack, the overly empathetic guy he was, decided to help her out. She seemed shocked at first when she was offered help by Jack, but eventually agreed.
Jack spent the evening not really thinking about the good deed he had done that afternoon. Early the next morning, he was taken down to the local station without any explanation whatsoever. It was only once he was there, and in the privacy of an interview room, that he found out that his arrest was related to the woman he had been helping with her stroller yesterday.
Jack could not believe it, but when the police explained the full details of the situation, his jaw nearly dropped to the floor. Jack had always been told he was too kind for his own good. Worried friends and family warned him that there would come a day when somebody would take serious advantage of his kindness. But Jack would always brush off their words, saying there wasn’t enough kindness in the world these days, so he would do everything he could to change that. However, the day someone took advantage finally came.
It was an early evening one day in the autumn when Jack and his wife, Monica, went out to dinner. They didn’t often go out due to their busy schedules and tight budget, but Jack decided his wife deserved a treat after a long week at her new teaching job. The restaurant was close by, so they decided to walk rather than take the car. However, they encountered a woman needing help. Monica, aware they were already close to being late for their reservation, wanted to keep walking. However, she knew her kind-hearted husband wasn’t able to walk past someone who was in need. So she finally rolled her eyes and lingered on the sidewalk as Jack went to investigate the problem.
The woman was off to the side of the road, seeming to be struggling to fix a battered red stroller. As Jack approached, he saw a baby in the stroller wrapped up in a blanket. Despite the rocking and shaking as the woman attempted to fix whatever was broken, the baby appeared to be sleeping. He seemed to be at a loss for words at first, even when he asked her what was wrong and if he could be of any help. The woman looked incredibly nervous when Jack approached her. He asked if she needed any help with the stroller as it was getting late and cold, which was no time for a baby to be outside.
Stuttering and stumbling over her words, she assured Jack that everything was fine and that she did not need help. But Jack saw that one of the stroller wheels had completely come off. Despite the woman telling him that she was fine, she was clearly having many difficulties trying to reattach it. Jack quickly told the woman not to worry and that he’d fix it for her.
Stiffly getting down onto his knees, he took the wheel from the silent woman to see how it attached to the stroller. Monica waited off to the side, smiling softly as her sweet husband made easy small talk with the woman in need. Being late for a reservation was better than leaving a struggling mother out in the cold with her baby. Jack didn’t notice, but Monica couldn’t help but see that the woman was nervous. She was glancing back and forth from Monica to Jack to the baby in the stroller and back. Monica assumed this young mother was anxious about having strangers help her.
Jack tried chatting with the woman while he fixed the wheel. He asked about the baby and how old it was, but the woman just muttered something not quite clear, indicating she either wasn’t comfortable or able to have a conversation. He decided not to ask any more questions and instead focused on the wheel.
In the end, it was a pretty easy fix. He was surprised that the woman had been unable to do this herself, but put her struggle down to her worry and the cold. With the wheel once more attached, she could barely look Jack in the eye as she thanked him and immediately rushed off with the stroller, seeming not to care about jostling her baby on the rough sidewalk.
Both Jack and Monica should have probably been more suspicious about the situation than they were, but they were kind-hearted people, and hindsight is a beautiful thing. They carried on their way to dinner, chatting easily, but they would very soon find out the full truth of the situation.
The rest of the evening went as normal. The couple was only slightly late for their reservation and had a lovely dinner, chatting about their week. Jack had to smooth-talk his way back into Monica’s good books a little for their lateness, but she couldn’t really be annoyed by her overly kind husband. Helping the woman was more important than a dinner reservation.
For the walk home from the restaurant, Jack and Monica took a slightly different route than before, but from a distance, they could still see the spot where Jack had helped fix the stroller earlier that evening. As they got closer, Jack was sure that he saw some commotion around the spot, but he was too far away to really make anything out, and part of him wanted to go and check it out. But it was late, and Monica wanted to get home and go to bed, so they carried on and were out of sight by the time several police cars with flashing lights arrived at the scene.
The whole situation with the stroller did bother Jack a little. He found himself worrying about the baby and if it was safe. The woman had seemed very, very nervous and agitated. Was she in trouble, perhaps? He hoped his little act of kindness had helped her out a little that evening.
Early the next morning, so early the sun wasn’t even fully up, Jack and Monica were shocked awake by a loud pounding on the front door. They certainly weren’t expecting any visitors, and especially not at this hour. What on Earth was going on?
Jack quickly scrambled to put some clothes on as the pounding on the door got louder and louder. Finally presentable, Jack limped downstairs, the chill of the autumn morning making his bones ache. There was more thunderous banging on the front door, and Jack was actually getting annoyed at this point. All this commotion had better be for something important, he thought, and by God, it was. He just could never have expected what it was all about.
When he finally swung the front door open, more than a little irritated, Jack was surprised to be greeted by the sight of four policemen in full uniform staring him in the face. They did not look happy in the slightest, with the appearance of people who had been up all night. What the hell were they doing here at his house, especially at this time of the morning?
Before Jack could ask for any kind of explanation, one of the officers demanded that Jack come with them immediately, that it was a matter of great urgency. He looked like he was impatient as hell and unwilling to take no for an answer. With no other option, Jack went with him down to the station, but only after he was assured that he wasn’t under arrest.
As it turns out, the woman Jack helped was trafficking illegal substances and used the stroller to conceal them. This gave them a reason to approach and eventually arrest the woman. Jack wasn’t in trouble, however, and was even given a reward for his help with the situation.
