What’s the best way to help an introvert who’s just been through something scary? Offer low-key, low-interaction support.

It was only 1:30 in the afternoon, but it had already been quite a day.

I was on a bus, 200 miles from home, with 55 fifth-graders—all of them high on Dairy Queen Dilly Bars—along with several of my fellow parent chaperones and the kids’ orchestra teacher, Mr. Cole.

We’d all been up since 5 a.m. so that we could travel three and a half hours southeast to Minneapolis, where we were treated to a kid-friendly performance by the Minnesota Orchestra followed by a fascinating guided tour of Target Field, home of baseball’s Minnesota Twins.

Now, ice cream in hand, I was settling in with my daughter Katie for the long ride home.

And I don’t mean “long” in terms of distance.

Let me put this in mathematical terms:

55 Dilly Bars + 55 sleep-deprived, hormones-amping-up tweens ÷ 1 bus = an echo chamber on wheels that is not nearly as rejuvenating as an introverted chaperone might hope and pray for it to be.

In fact, the request had just been granted to watch a movie on the bus’s DVD system.

So I had to chuckle when I got the following text from our neighbor Sunny, whose daughter Harper was also on the trip:

“Wow. You guys did it all today. I hope you can rest on the way back.”

As an educator—and parent … and introvert—herself, Sunny was savvy enough to end her text with a winking smile emoticon.

Something’s Clearly Wrong

Just as I went to respond to Sunny’s text with some version of “not hardly,” I glanced up and saw a commotion across the aisle.

One of the other parents—I later learned his name was Derek—was in trouble.

He was shaking and his eyes were rolled back. A line of what appeared to be blood—he later told me it was Dilly Bar—was trickling out of the corner of his mouth.

I thought he was having a heart attack, or a stroke, or who knows what.

Something was just obviously wrong.

And Derek’s son was right next to him, witnessing it all.

A Pause—Then Support from All Sides

I would love to say that I leaped into action, but I didn’t.

None of us did.

Time really did stand still for a full second. The world, or at least the world in my immediate midst, hit the pause button and took a collective deep breath.

Then I did jump out of my seat.

All of us did.

The usual interpersonal norms were immediately suspended; we were all family now, our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers in the new present moment that had been stripped of life’s contrivances.

Mr. Cole called 911.

The bus driver got us off the interstate and flagged down an ambulance that happened to be passing by.

Following the instructions being relayed to me by both the bus driver and Mr. Cole, I hauled Derek out of his seat, laid him in the aisle, then turned him on his side and held onto him until, moments later, emergency personnel came aboard and determined he was having a seizure.

Thankfully, Derek was eventually able to walk out of the bus himself and into the waiting ambulance.

I rode along with him to a nearby hospital so that he wouldn’t be alone.

Which left me with my own dilemma:

How do you best help a guy you don’t even know who’s exhausted because he’s just been through a health scare on a bus full of middle-schoolers?

It was easier than I ever would have thought.

Offering Support the Introvert Way

Derek was pretty quiet—a fellow introvert, I figured.

So I just sat outside his room in the ER and checked in with him once in a while until he was cleared to leave the hospital a couple of hours later.

And as my sister (who lives in the Minneapolis area and came to our rescue) drove us toward home afterward, I said over my shoulder to Derek, who was in the back seat:

“We’re two introverts up here. So if you don’t feel like socializing, we of all people will understand.”

“Great,” he said as he exhaled.

And then, clearly relieved, he fell asleep—finally getting the rest he needed on the way back from a trip to remember.