It all happened so suddenly. One minute, I'm laughing, feeling alright in my own body for once, then I'm being woken up by someone pushing on my chest and people surrounding me. It's honestly frightening when I see how much water I choked up.
All the voices and noises I hear are distorted, like I'm on the wrong radio channel but the music is still trying to come through. I try to talk, scream, cry out for someone, but all that comes out is more water. In a way, the feeling of my body, so light, almost like I'm nothing, it feels nice, yet really painful. It's like a tiny person is running up and down my throat with track shoes with the tiny little barb things that help the runners dig into the track.
When I look around, it's like everything is stuck in slow motion. All the figures, which I could only assume are people, are blurring into the next and the light that comes from behind the figures is almost blinding. I guess someone turn on the patio lights. Every time I move, it's like I'm moving too fast. I tried to sit up, but ended up getting lightheaded and someone laid me back down.
My hearing has came back and I can hear sirens in the distance. It doesnt scare me anymore, the sirens. I know what they're going to do to me. I may have slipped into the pool when, if, I blacked out. Went unconscious underwater. Somebody was still trying to do CPR on me, I don't know why considering that I'm awake and breathing now. The EMT's are going to run over with a gurney, lift me onto it, someone's gonna put an oxygen mask on me, and once I'm in the ambulance they are going to question me.
"What happened?"
"What's your name?"
"Did you have anything to drink tonight?"
So many questions. When this happens with my mom, when it's too bad for me to save her by myself, they ask me the same questions each time.
"What all did she take?"
I usually hold up a bag holding the bottle of my depression meds she steals. Sometimes it pain killers she bought from a person at the bar.
"What did she do?"
I often find her in the same place, so I answer the same:
"I found her on her bedroom floor. The remaining pills were scattered on the floor around her."
"How long has she been unconscious/seizing?"
That usually depends on what she took. If it was my meds and I had to call the ambulance in, it was longer than 10 minutes. It it were other meds, I would call them four minutes after me trying to save her or make her throw them up.
For my case, I don't have the answers. I don't think anybody does. All I remember was standing inside the house, drinking a vodka punch I made, I even opened a new bottle of punch so I would avoid getting roofied, and the next thing I know is someone is pushing on my chest, so hard I can actually feel my ribs cracking, just like cartilage in the nose does when it's been broken. Again, it all happened so suddenly.
As the paramedics load me onto the gurney, they question the person who did CPR on me. Turns out that person is a complete stranger to me. I don't even think he goes to our school.
"Do you know what happened?" They ask him.
"She walked over near the pool and just stood there for a second staring at the pool, then she just fell in." The stranger looked at me worried and climbed into the ambulance with us.
I didn't pay attention to what he said, and I don't know why, but that made me smile. My own mother probably wouldn't do that for me.
"Do you know how much she drank?"
