This weekend utterly drained me.
Saturday on our way to dinner, getting onto the highway we notice a large backup on the onramp only to realize it was an accident that had just happened; one vehicle, a Jeep Cherokee, was off the road on its side. So I, along with about 6 other cars, all pull over and get out to help. One driver, no passengers, no other vehicles, we are all steadying the car and a few of us are holding the door open so the driver can climb out. After some struggling he gets out, we let the door close and then we tip the car back onto its tires. Amazingly the driver is completely unhurt, aware, and in remarkably good spirits. He says an animal darted in front of his car on the onramp and he tried to avoid it and before he knew it he was skidded off the road and tipping over. Had his seatbelt on, which probably saved his life. One or two people stuck around with him while waiting for EMS and a tow truck. So that was around 5:30 in the evening.
Fast forward to overnight Saturday, around 1:50am. We are asleep, with plans to go out to breakfast fairly early the next morning. My wife's phone rings, and it's her colleague and friend who happens to live down the street from us. She doesn't make a habit of middle of the night calls, so my wife answers. All she hears is her friend calling her name and saying "I'm freezing to death" and then she hangs up. I should add it's roughly 12° outside. So my wife frantically throws on some clothes, gets her phone and keys and drives over to our friend's house, telling me to stay in the house with the kids who are still sound asleep.
Short while later my wife returns home, I go downstairs to see our friend literally in a ball on the floor, desperately snuggling our big dog, shivering under blankets my wife has given her. She reeks of alcohol and has told my wife she's been outside for 3 hours and is locked out of her own house. Fearing hypothermia, I grab an in-ear thermometer and try to take her temperature while my wife looks up symptoms of hypothermia. Her core temp is too low for the thermometer to give any reading other than "Lo" so I call 911. This is much to the verbal displeaure of our friend who is insisting she needs to get home to her cat saying she's not going to the hospital.
Fire truck and ambulance arrive, everyone files into our living room where she is still laying on the floor. They ask her various questions, check her vitals, etc. Her BP is good, her body temp is slowly warming up, but her blood sugar is low. EMT asks us to get her a sandwich to raise her blood sugar and he starts trying to get the story from her. She says she's had 4 beers (bullshit), hasn't eaten in almost 24 hours and never took her anti-seizure medication (something we didn't know she was on). So this is why we called 911.
She refuses to let them take an EKG, but the EMT is pretty convinced she had a seizure. He is also pretty sure she isn't in any danger anymore, but he wants her to go to the ER. She continues to refuse so he has her sign a release. She answering all the questions properly so she is of sound mind, so he can't force her to go. He tells us what we need to do to watch out for her and gives us his cell number in case she seizes again. She barely eats any of the sandwich, everyone leaves, and we set her up to crash on our couch. Neither of us got much sleep even after she passed back out.
The next morning my wife goes back to her house with her while she calls a locksmith to get into her house and change the locks, etc. At this point we find out a little about what happened: Friday, she was told by the school that she would be losing her department chair position due to her unreliable attendance record this year. So in a fit of anxiety and depression, she basically just went out drinking. She wound up 2 counties south, with no memory of why she went there, and got pulled over and cited for a DUI. Her car was impounded, likely with her keys inside, and she got a cab home. Apparently, the cab left her at her house, where she realized she didn't have her keys, she had a seizure and passed out in the freezing cold, and when she woke up she called my wife. When my wife left her place round 9am, she was sleeping in her own bed and that was that.
tl;dr - helped at a car accident, then had a drunk friend suffering form hypothermia crash overnight at my house at 2am.
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