katikat | A wonderful story about Robert Downey Jr. (Reply)

There's this blog entry that an American author posted about Robert Downey Jr. and what he had done for her grandma many years ago and it's so beautiful I had tears in my eyes when I finished reading it. Link.

The best parts:

Luckily, somebody did take control of the situation, and that person was Robert Downey Jr.

He ordered someone to call an ambulance. Another to bring a glass of water. Another to fetch a blanket. He took off his gorgeous linen jacket and he rolled up his sleeves and he grabbed hold of my grandmother’s leg, and then he took that jacket that I’d assumed he’d taken off only to it keep out of the way, and he tied it around her wound. I watched the cream colored linen turn scarlet with her blood.

He told her not to worry. He told her it would be alright. He knew, instinctively, how to speak to her, how to distract her, how to play to her vanity. He held onto her calf and he whistled. He told her how stunning her legs were.

She said to him, to my humiliation: “My granddaughter tells me you’re a famous actor but I’ve never heard of you.”

He stayed with her until the ambulance came and then he walked alongside the stretcher holding her hand and telling her she was breaking his heart by leaving the party so early, just as they were getting to know each other. He waved to her as they closed the doors. “Don’t forget to call me, Silvia,” he said. “We’ll do lunch.”

(...)

Some fifteen years after that garden party, ten years after my grandmother had died and five since he’d been released from prison, I saw him in a restaurant.

(...)

I said to him, “I don’t have any idea if you remember this…” and I told him the story.

He remembered.

“I just wanted to thank you,” I said. “And I wanted to tell you that it was simply the kindest act I’ve ever witnessed.”

He stood up and he took both of my hands in his and he looked into my eyes and he said, “You have absolutely no idea how much I needed to hear that today.”