A GRANDMOTHER has been reunited with the off-duty nurse who ran to her aid when she lay bleeding heavily in Chelmsford.
Julie Sanderson, 48, of Peel Road, Springfield, visited Sheila Osborne on Monday, a little over a month after the pensioner fell and hit her face on a wall outside the Tesco supermarket in Springfield Road.
Quick-thinking Julie stemmed Sheila's bleeding with her 21-year-old daughter's scarf and comforted her at the scene.
"I'm really glad to know she's ok. It's a relief as it was horrible to see," said Julie.
"I didn't know if the accident resulted in a head injury. She fell on her face really but it could have been quite nasty and she could have had a brain injury or something a lot worse."
Sheila, 77, of Weymouth Road Springfield, was walking from Marks & Spencer in Chelmsford High Street, to the Chelmsford Social Club car park, on Good Friday, when at about 12.30pm she tripped crossing Bond Street towards the Tesco entrance.
Her face struck the brick wall surrounding the supermarket, fracturing her eye socket and necessitating stitches and a five-day hospital stay.
An appeal to help find the off-duty nurse she vaguely remembered was published in the Chronicle two weeks ago.
Julie, whose husband contacted this paper on the day the appeal went out, said she and daughter Rachel Finch were posting a letter when they spotted the fall.
"She was then lying on the floor and there was quite a lot of blood and my daughter took off her scarf and put it under her eye as it was gaping quite badly," said the Broomfield Hospital surgical nurse. "I got my daughter to phone for the ambulance and I spoke to her, just trying to calm her down.
"I remember, bless her, she had a pound coin still in her hand for a trolley."
After helping Sheila into the ambulance she asked colleagues around the hospital wards for an update on her condition, but to no avail.
Sheila said: "I'm glad she's come forward actually because I didn't quite know what to do.
"When I asked at the hospital they said they didn't know how they could find her. They said they have lots of staff called Julie."
