A few days ago, at, I don’t know, 9pm or so (?), Derek came out of his room and said “I need to tell you something.” I finished washing my hands and turned around and he said “I just got off the phone with someone who said she took three bottles of pills.” It’s a girl who he’s never met, who he’s only talked to on AIM a few times, and he was very clearly weirded out. “I guess I should call 911, huh.” He called 911, they rerouted him to Utah, he said to the policewoman: she said she took three bottles of pills before she called me, I talked to her for a while as she got drowsier and finally she just hung up, it’s been about two hours. The policewoman called the girl, then called Derek back, saying that the girl told HER that she had only taken two sleeping pills, sounded sleepy, and was told to “call Derek and let him know you’re OK.” Derek said “well she told me she took three bottles. Do you think she’s lying to you or lying to me?” The policewoman said it was his call, but she said the girl sounded fine. She said to him, “So, do you still want me to send out an ambulance? I really don’t think it’s necessary, she sounds just fine to me, but it’s your call. When did she say she took the pills? A few hours ago? If it was really three bottles she’d be dead by now. She sounds fine to me.” So Derek said no and hung up with the Utah police. By this time we thought the girl was lying too, and Derek said “Ugh. Should I tell them to dispatch the ambulance, or not? Oh forget it I’ll just call her tomorrow, and tell her that I’m never talking to her again. And if she doesn’t pick up, she’s probably just avoiding my call so I think she’s dead… but…”, but we also figured that if it was actually fake, she would call Derek and tell her she was OK like the policewoman told her to do, now that she knew Derek would actually do something about dispatching an ambulance. But she didn’t call, and she didn’t call, and Derek tried calling her again twice and she didn’t pick up, and I gave him the idea to send her a text that said “calling the ambulance if you don’t call me in 15 minutes,” and she didn’t call, so he picked up the phone to call the Utah police station again. I figured that if it was fake at least she would get a scare and know not to do it again or something. “I’m not gonna get the same person, I’m going to have to explain everything all over again,” he said. “I’m sure you can ask at the front desk to talk to her,” I said, “unless the policewoman’s like, gone home or something. ha.” When he got the Utah police station’s front desk, he was told that she had gone home becuase it was the end of her shift. “You jinxed it, Judy.” I was shocked and horrified. But then he got tranferred to another person, who only listened to the story once, and then said “I’ll send an ambulance” without any more questions. All Derek had was her cell phone number, so they had to go and contact the cell phone company to get an address. Then began the waiting. An hour (?) later, Derek got a call from the girl’s sister. “What happened?” she asked. So it turned out that when the ambulance came, the girl was seizuring in the bathroom with empty medicine bottles all around her. This is the point at which I burst into tears. I was really very upset that it was real. I totally thought she was lying. I was really upset. And I have never even met or talked to this girl or know anything about her in any way, shape or form. And this was all happening in Utah. Then we got another call, and her father talked to Derek, whose voice, by the way, had been lost all day so he was worried about sounding like some kind of deranged rasping psycho throughout this whole thing. Her father said she was in the ambulance on the way to the hospital and he’d call if anything happened.

The next day there were no calls. The day after, Derek called them; the girl is still in the hospital, her father says the doctors say she’s getting better. Derek and I don’t even know if she’s conscious. All in all the whole thing has left us really freaked out, obviously D more so than me, what do I have to do with anything?

So we are left with questions. I hate how everything is left to chance. It was by chance that Derek got the first policewoman who was skeptical and didn’t just dispatch the ambulance right away, of course she didn’t, she was talking to some random guy from California and she must have been tired and it was the end of her shift and she wanted to go home. What if he’d gotten someone else who was able to send an ambulance earlier? What if we waited less time to call back? Would it have made a difference, those hours? What if he hadn’t called at all, that is unthinkably terrible. What if she doesn’t get better? What if she does? I hope she gets better and then is able to find help and really gets mentally better. I don’t know how to approach thinking about how I feel about the situation. I am so very far removed from it all but I’m freaked out by it nonetheless. Would she really have been dead in a few hours with three bottles? If so, then did she actually take them later, because she was still alive when the ambulance came? Why would you call someone you don’t really even know to say your last words to?