EPTQuick background: I'm living in a house with 6 people: myself, a British woman on a work visa (she’s a main character, let’s call her Holly), a seldom-seen night shift worker, the landlord’s daughter and her boyfriend, and the star of the show, Mr. Jay.
Jay is a bit odd. He’s only been here for a few weeks so I don’t know him very well, but he’s a strange guy so I tend to be less shocked about him doing strange things than if it was someone else. Like between last Wednesday and Friday he must have drank ten (10!) liters of Coca-Cola. That’s fucking nuts.
Let’s jump to Saturday night. Holly and I had gone to the library (wtf they charged me $30 to get a library card!) and come back around 5ish, Jay seemed normal to me then. He’s a heavy smoker so he goes in and out of the house fairly regularly. Nothing suspect yet.
Around 8ish I was cooking supper and he came down (Jay, Holly and I have rooms on the top floor) and started talking absolute nonsense to me:
“Is there someone in your room bro?”
“What? No.”
“So are we cleaning the house at 1130?” – there was no context for this
“..?”
“Upstairs and downstairs?”
“Are you ok?”
“Yeah this is great man”
“Ok.”
“See ya bro”
At this point I figured he was just drunk out of his mind, but he wasn’t causing any trouble so I wasn’t too worried. I messaged Holly about it just to give her a heads up. Later she was complaining about him talking to himself in his room (she could hear through the wall), but for the most part I sort of forgot about him and played some League until late (learning Irelia, she’s quite fun).
Sunday morning I woke up and was fucking cold. This is because the landlord and his daughter are away and didn’t turn the heat on, so the house was 15 degrees. The landlord’s daughter’s boyfriend (LDB henceforth) turned the heat on and then went out. Holly and I made plans to go for lunch with a friend at 1. As we left (Jay still in his room) I said that we should probably try to wake him if he was still asleep when we got back.
We got back at 3 and he still seemed to be in his room. Faint snoring sound confirmed this. I knocked on the door and called his name, no response. I’ve known people to sleep until 3 so it didn’t seem too weird. Anyways there was nothing else to do – the door was locked. Went back to gaming for a few hours.
At 6 there was still no sign and I started to get genuinely concerned. Holly and I both tried waking him with very forceful banging on the door, with no effect. This is the point where I think I made a poor judgment call, but it’s tough to say even in hindsight. LDB was still out so we had no keys to his room, so essentially the decision was whether to continue waiting/letting him sleep or to call 911 and have them break down the door. We made the decision not to do anything yet. In hindsight this may have been Gandalf-level foolishness, but it’s what we did.
It wasn’t until 7:30 that we decided “this is fucking ridiculous”. I called Telehealth Ontario but they pretty quickly transferred me to 911 when they understood the situation. Not long after they’re asking me my address and saying an ambulance is on its way. Holy shit.
Now there was some very lucky timing here and LDB arrived home about 5 minutes before the ambulance. We managed to get the door open (lots of unmarked keys) right as EMTs started coming in the door. Sure enough he was catatonic, laid out in a sprawl on his bed, completely unresponsive to everything. But alive.
It sounds bad but I was glad that the decision to call emergency services was vindicated. Anyways the EMTs did their thing and mostly ignored us. Cops showed up and asked us questions.
Humorous interlude (remember Holly is English):
Police: Could you spell your name for me?
Holly: Hayth, oh, ell, …
Police: Aytch?
Holly: Haytch, oh…
Police: Aytch?
Holly: Haytch!
Police: Can you write that for me?
This is close to the end of the story. The EMTs were eventually satisfied that Jay was safe for transport and carried him on a stretcher down the stairs and away. Police asked some more questions, then peaced after awhile. Since we’re not family or anything they wouldn’t tell us what the actual problem was, although one officer speculated with us that it was a bad trip / OD.
That’s basically it. Too surreal. Would love to hear speculation on the likely cause.
