But here is where the night gets interesting. At 1:30 in the morning I was walking down Lower Rathmines back to my apartment, listening to my iPod, when I passed a courtyard in which two girls were crouched over a third girl who looked to be unconscious. I pulled out my earbuds and asked if they needed help. They told me they were just walking by and happened to see the girl laying there and that she was unresponsive. I moved closer to her and saw that she was completely unresponsive. We picked her up enough that she was sitting upright, and I looked to my right and noticed that a guy was sitting a little deeper into the courtyard on the ground with a goofy grin fixed to his face. "Who's that?" I asked them, and they looked over to where I was pointing and surprised said that they didn't realize he was there. "Hey man, what's your name?" He mumbled something we couldn't understand. "What happened to your friend?" He looked up at us and smiled and started to mutter something utterly incoherent until he gave up and looked down at the ground. I called the ambulance (in Ireland the emergency number is 999) and talked to a woman on the other end and reported the problem. She asked us to check if the girl was still breathing, which she was, and then told me to make sure that she was lying on her side. We moved her to that position and I gave her the address of the house connected to the courtyard. She said the ambulance would be there in 8-10 minutes. The two other girl were primarily concerned with the unconscious girl, and tried to get information from her. She was completely unresponsive. In front of the guy I saw a small ziplock bag lying on top of the grass and picked it up. Inside was the remains of some white powder. I showed it to the girls and we thought it was probably cocaine and now thought that she probably overdosed.
The ambulance finally arrived and slowly drove down the street, seemingly unable to find where we were. I had to run to flag them down, and when I did the attendant in the passenger seat jumped out and followed me. When he got to the courtyard he bent over the girl and shined a flashlight in her face. "I think it's pretty obvious what happened to her," he said, though I didn't really understand what he meant. He tried talking to the guy, who finally said that his name was Gav, but he was completely incoherent. The best he could do was smile and say "Hi," in the most charming way he could force. After a few minutes the attendant asked me to go find the ambulance driver. I ran down the street where the ambulance was parked and waved to the guy in the driver's seat. He looked pissed off and said, "Jesus Christ, I had no idea where any of you went," and followed me back to the courtyard. I was wondering why they didn't have walkie-talkies, or at least cell phones to stay in touch. It didn't seem to make any sense. They got the girl to sit up and flashed a light on her face. I now saw what the first attendant was talking about when he said that it was pretty obvious what happened to her. Under the girl's nose was a quite visible smearing of white powder. I felt really bad for her.
The Garda came as well and had to wait until the girl agreed to go in the ambulance. She kept calling out for Gav, but he was too messed up to answer. When the Garda asked him what they took, he mumbled the word ketamine. For those who don't know, ketamine is primarily used to put out horses, but people use it as an anti-depressant. Why anyone would snort a horse tranquilizer is a mystery, but I guess it happens. After the girl was finally put in the ambulance one of the garda took down mine and the two girl's information and we all went our separate ways. I hope those two people are okay.
On Friday we went to Cork, which was probably the most fun we had without actually doing much. But that is the subject of my next post. Stay tuned!
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