I can't fly

That's one thing I have in common with Orville The Duck.
I found out last Monday by 'flying through the air with the greatest of ease, like the daring young man on the flying trapeze', as the song goes. You see, I was trying to be helpful. That can land you in an awful lot of trouble.
I will make my story as brief as possible. But I do say 'try'.
We don't have a gents toilet (or a ladies for that matter) in our office. It's the same for every company in the building. We don't have a kitchen either. If you want the ladies it's the first, third or fifth floor of the six-storey office block. If you need the gents then it's the second or fourth. The communal kitchen is on the third floor at the opposite end of the building to all these toilets.
Now no-one much goes through the fire door at the end of the corridor past the kitchen. There are no offices to be found that way. But there hides a secret... a small stairwell with a toilet on every mezzanine floor on the way down.
It is a place of solitude used by 'those in the know'. Our Leisure Editor uses it. So does our 72-year-old marathon-running part-time sub-editor. But then he has a good excuse - he uses the kitchen the most to make us all cups of tea. Our circulation manager used to use it before he was made redundant. Then there's maybe half-a-dozen others who work in the offices nearest to the kitchen. That's about it.
Then of course there's the cleaner. Let's face it, it's a pretty good job she does know it's there... and last Monday I came out of that toilet and started up the steps towards the kitchen, to meet her coming down the steps towards me, bucket and mop in hand. She's Portuguese (there's a huge Portuguese and Brazilian community in Harlesden and Kensal Green) and very friendly although her English is limited. Far better than my Portuguese mind you.
She asked me whether there was anyone else in the toilet. Being helpful I said I would check for her and turned round halfway up the stairs. That was the crucial decision. Trying to be helpful.
I have epilepsy. It takes two forms. One, major seizures where I fall to the ground and shake all over, bite my tongue etc as you always see it portrayed. Fortunately that has not been a regular problem for more than 12 years. Two, absences where for a moment I will be totally unaware of what is going on around me and then 'come round' maybe two to five seconds later. This will mean my eyes glaze over and if people are talking to me I will just say 'hmmn' a lot. My body will carry on with normal activities. One flatmate watched me continue tying my shoelaces while I had 'blanked out'. I have been making a cup of coffee and put the spoonful of coffee straight into my mouth rather than into the cup. That's not nice. Nicer, however, than what happened when I blanked out on the stairs.
On this occasion I came to not going 'bleuuugh! what's that horrible taste in my mouth' but 'oh dear, the floor seems to be coming towards me at an alarming speed and I think I'm going to bang my.... thud'. Six or seven steps up. Concrete floor. Thin office carpet. Ouch.
Fortunately my glasses fell off during my fall. Fortunately I turned so that I landed on the side of my head not on my face. Fortunately I hit the area between my ear and eye and not my chin.
Cue very upset cleaner. She grabs a bloke aho happens to be in the kitchen to look after me. She then goes down to the ground floor to get the guy from reception. Then they get me some water. Then he goes down to our office to get my deputy. Then he gets a rag from the kitchen for me to hold against my head. Then the cleaner goes into the nearby offices to see if anyone has any ice in a mini-bar. She reappears with an ice-tray and puts some ice into the cloth. After a while holding that against my head I move downstairs and sit in my office for about half an hour hoping that the ice will work quickly and I can get on with my work - after all, it is a Monday.
Eventually our Swedish reporter comes in and tells me that I have to go to hospital as she had a similar thing happen to her and she had to stay in hospital overnight when she was younger. So my deputy drives me to Hammersmith Hospital...
See receptionist. Wait in lobby. See nurse. Go back to wait in lobby. See doctor. Wait in corridor. Be X-rayed. Wait in corridor. See doctor again. But I hadn't fractured anything that the doctor could see. So he told me to rest and be careful....

Thought for the day: 'Those magnificent men in their flying machines, they go up tiddly-om-pom, they go down tiddly-own-down.' Lord only knows. It was a film, but was it something else first? Someone look it up on the internet and tell me.