To say Joy was anxious was an understatement. She'd been taking a back road approach to leaving the city in an effort to escape traffic, only to run into heavy traffic anyway. She sat at the wheel of the car, drumming the steering wheel impatiently, looking out through the windshield when she saw it, a man running like a bat out of hell down the footpath, nimbly dodging and weaving his way past people and objects. Then, out of nowhere, the running man seemed to grab his head and stumble to a stop. Above his head, the limb of a nearby tree branch snapped and collapsed at the man's feet while somewhere nearby, there was the sound of glass shattering.
And then, just like that, nothing. The man rose uneasily to his feet, apparently unsure of where to go and what to do. He began to stumble around aimlessly for a moment, almost falling over as he stepped off the sidewalk and into the road, stumbling in front of Joy's car before coming to a stop, leaning on the hood.

The stranger was disheveled from his running, with short black hair and unkempt stubble. The whole incident seemed… off to Joy. The tree branch snapping at the same time as the man grabbing his head and the sound of glass shattering seemed too convenient, but considering the day she was having, Joy could just be getting paranoid, or rather, more paranoid than usual. The branch was probably old anyway and some kid probably hurled a ball through a window. Nevertheless, the man seemed lost, uneasy on his feet. Was he drunk? Suffering from exhaustion or dehydration? A dehydration headache would explain his grabbing his head at least, plus he had been running pretty fast when she had first seen him, not to mention the fact that his eyes seemed slightly unfocused and glazed over. Shifting the car into park, Joy opened her door, stepping out to walk around and address the stranger.

[B]"Hey,"[/B] she said gently, [B]"You okay? You need some help?"[/B]

Every paranoid bone in her body was screaming to leave the guy and just keep driving, but the man clearly needed help. Joy may have been paranoid, but she wasn't paranoid enough to stop being a decent person.