LUMBERTON — Virginia Locklear, Geraldine Bell and Louise Wormley were strangers when they arrived at the courthouse to pay their taxes early one Thursday morning, three months ago.

By the time they left, Locklear had saved Bell’s life and Wormley was a new friend.

Bell held a lunch Tuesday at Abigail’s Tea Room on Fayetteville Road to thank the women for helping her that Dec. 31. Locklear, a clinical risk specialist at Southeastern Regional Medical Center, and Wormley were there, along with several other friends and hospital employees.

The women talked about how their mornings clashed when Bell fainted to the courthouse floor.

Bell had been chatting with Wormley outside the building; they had both arrived before it opened, and in the course of conversation discovered they had a bit in common — age, young relatives in the military. Wormley recalled that despite the chilly air, Bell removed a jacket and then a sweater, saying she was overheated.

Feeling increasingly ill, Bell was ready to leave just as the courthouse opened. She decided to go ahead and drop off her payment. Inside the courthouse, she crashed to the floor.

“People were talking, trying to be neighborly, then all of a sudden she dropped,” Locklear said. “She fell full force, straight back. Her head hit the cement floor hard.”

Locklear said people were standing over Bell, paralyzed. Locklear cleared them out of the way and felt for a pulse — there was none.

“I said something silly,” she said to a friend sitting beside her at Abigail’s, pausing to think for a moment. “I said give me a bamboo bag,” she said with a laugh.

She corrected, asking for a resuscitation bag. Courthouse employees said they didn’t have one, so Locklear started to perform CPR.

“I always wondered in a situation like that, would I think about preserving myself — there are so many diseases you can catch — but it didn’t matter,” Locklear said. “I just had to help that lady — it’s in your blood.”

Wormley remembered that a man tried to move Bell and Locklear stopped him, saying Bell could have fractures from the hard fall.

“She said to him with this look, ‘I’m a nurse,’” Wormley said.

Meanwhile, Wormley gave Locklear and the rescue personnel all the information she had learned about Bell, and had gone to Bell’s car to tell her husband what happened.

Locklear and Wormley both checked on Bell when she was in the hospital, and Wormley has stayed in touch with Bell since. Locklear’s co-worker Jason Chandler, who was also at the lunch, submitted her story as an instance of an exemplary employee for SRMC’s Bear of Excellence Award.

“She came to my rescue,” Bell said. “I wasn’t breathing, I had no heart beat, and she brought me back.

“The reason for this lunch? I just want to say thank you.”