A man keeled over and hit the floor hard one morning when I was sitting in my town’s public library.

I wear earplugs when I work there, but even with those, the muffled “thud” that I heard caused me to lift my head. There he was, lying in a heap on the floor under the desk at the computer station, his grey hair falling wildly about him.

We needed to ascertain whether this person had just dropped dead.

Those of us who saw this from afar pulled off glasses, turned our heads, or took steps in the man’s direction, while those who were near the man promptly went to him, as did the reference librarian who was sitting nearby behind the information desk.

Many individuals who spend hours at the computer station at my town’s public library are among those who likewise show up at Saturday evening soup kitchens and AA meetings at the White Whale on Sunday afternoons. Some of those who attended to this person — who still lay heaped and unmoving on the floor — also likely numbered among that contingent.

I wondered what I should do, as a citizen now unexpectedly witnessing a fellow citizen in crisis. I concluded that if I were to approach him, I would only get in the way of the others who were already in attendance and who seemed much more knowledgeable about what to do. So I stayed back.

I saw one person feel for a pulse and I thought, “Of course he had to feel for a pulse! We needed to ascertain whether this person had just dropped dead.”

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“There’s a slight one,” one of the people told the reference librarian who, by this point, was on the phone with emergency responders. I heard someone say to the man, “Can you hear me?” There was a little movement. “Can you tell me your name?” Evidently, no. “Do you know where you are?” Still no answer. “Help is coming,” he said, referring to the call to EMT services.

When the EMTs came in — in that strapping yet compassionate way — they took charge. The picture quickly became clear. “Have you had anything to drink today?”

“Uh-huh.”

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“How much?”

No answer.

“A lot or a little?”

A lot. 

The fallen man was stone drunk. He had passed out while sitting at the computer station — and yet dutiful citizens stepped up and tended to him gently and compassionately. The impulse to help overruled moral judgment. Apart from the shock of so unseemly a sight in a public library, the situation was handled deftly with composure and dignity, with little alarm and no drama.

The medical team helped him onto the gurney, then wheeled him out. I assumed he was bound for the ER, and I wondered what this brief episode would cost and what additional costs would likewise be incurred at the hospital.

What stood out to me in that moment was the picture of a community rallying around a fallen man and — drunk though he was — a helpless man.

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The librarian and others who were sitting nearby at the computer station desks, and the people (like me) who were otherwise standing around in willing attendance, together created a picture of a community behaving as a community. I knew in that moment that if I, too, by some unforeseen calamity, were to collapse and become helpless, I would not be left to die alone.

There was good will there, even if (some might argue) it was undeserved, since the man should not have come to a public place in such a state. One could reliably assume as well that his medical care will somehow in the end be covered by the community.

After so many disheartening and disturbing pictures lately showing anarchists infiltrating communities, inciting war, tearing city streets apart, bludgeoning citizens with poles, spraying people with mace, knocking people out who then end up fallen and helpless, like this man in the library — the picture of what I saw play out in my library righted something.

It reminded me of what belonging to a community is supposed to look like — and what it does look like when everyday citizens take charge and rally themselves to help. Civic beauty is everywhere, in every town across this beautiful land we call America. It is civic beauty that so many are fighting for.

Wendy Murray served as regional correspondent for TIME magazine in Honduras in the early 1990s, and later as associate editor and senior writer at Christianity Today. She is the author of 10 nonfiction books and a novel.