Glory Medina woke up staring at the sky, her head spinning.
She couldn’t recall falling. But as she sat up in the grass at the Bellaire Transit Center, her memories started to return.
“I just need water,” Medina rasped.
The Puerto Rico native had just donated plasma and had been waiting at bus stops near her Gulfton apartment that had no benches, no shade and no shelter amid July’s record heat wave.
Her water bottle was empty, and she was dizzy from the heat. She hoped the air-conditioned ride to the transit center would let her recover enough to buy more water at the next stop.
It didn’t. Medina, 45, passed out just before she tried to cross Bellaire Boulevard.
“It’s really hard to wait for 20 minutes standing in the sun,” she said. “I get heat stroke at least once in a year.”