Longest. Night. EVER.

Ok, so I know that I just posted yesterday, but last night was one of those things that you have to write down while it's still fresh. To celebrate the end of the first week of classes, several of the international kids came to my suite for dinner and drinks before going out to a nightclub or something. I made tuna rosy (thanks for sending me that recipe Grandma, it's delicious), and there was much rejoicing. The number of people kept increasing so an initial group of about 4 eventually became a group of 10-12. At this point we left my room and went down to the rooms of those guys who live next to me (Brandon, Adam, Jake, and Zach) and there was additional alcohol and the eventual decision to go to a club called Nirvana which is on the beach. So taxis were called (it took 3 of them to get everyone there), and we were on our way. However, upon arriving it became excessively clear that one of the girls had had way too much. She stumbled out of the cab and ran for a nearby grassy hill where she promptly began crying, vomiting, and stumbling towards the sea. Some of the other girls (Leah, Summer, and Baeli) went to help her out wile I stayed with the rest of the group to wait for the last taxi to arrive. When everyone got there it became yet clearer still that, not only did this girl need to leave, she needed to go to a hospital. To put this in context, she is tiny, like 5 foot nothing, and had been chugging vodka for some reason. She was almost completely unresponsive, vomiting a lot without really producing anything, and her skin was very cold to the touch. My CMC freshmen year orientation training kicked in when I noticed these things and I so I mentioned that there was I distinct chance that she had alcohol poisoning. It was decided that me, Beali, and Summer would go to the hospital with her while everyone else went to the club. I had Leah get some water and a garbage bag from inside the club just in case. This turned out to be a spectacularly good idea. We had a helpful Israeli girl hail a cab and set the fare, then I had to pick up the drunk girl (who was completely ragdoll at this point) and we left for the hospital. You may be wondering why we took a cab instead of an ambulance or something, and the reason for that is that we called the Madrichim, who are social activity coordinators/RAs, and they told us to take a cab instead. Because I was the one carrying her she was on my lap the entire time and man oh man was I glad that bag was there because she threw up at least twice more on the ride over (at the end of the night I was still miraculously vomit free). There was one horrible yet hilarious moment when Baeli had the window down in the front seat and the wind inflated the bag... it was so gross.

We got to the hospital, paid the taxi, and then got a very interesting introduction to Israeli health care. So we get inside and there is a medical guy there and he has me put the drunk on a gurney. Then, and this really enraged Baeli and Summer, he had me push the gurney through the hospital. Now, putting her onto the gurney was hard, because she was completely limp, and so her head did hit the bars on one side of it (I felt bad about that), but pushing that gurney was really really difficult. Those things are really hard to steer and I kept hitting walls. When we got her into admission and they asked us for her insurance information we discovered that the drunk girl had left her purse in the first taxi she took to the beach, so she had no money, no phone, and no identification. Also, those of us there barely knew her. So we filled in the information as best we could and Summer ended up footing the bill for the hospital stay because we couldn't get her insurance info. While this was going on I was allowed to wheel her back to where the doctors were, but seeing as how I have never been in a hospital before (let alone an Israeli hospital) I had no clue where I was going. And that is when I learned that Israeli doctors can be marvelously unhelpful at times. Picture this, if you will: it's about 2am and I, an obviously confused American am wheeling a small obviously sick girl through a hospital. I see a doctor and ask here where to take the drunk girl. The doctor responds "There" and points in the general direction of a hallway. I go towards that hallway and it splits off into several directions. So I ask another doctor where to take her and she says "There" and points in the general direction of another hallway. So I got towards "there" and it splits again. I get fed up with that crap and go back out and ask the doctors where specifically I should take her. The doctor looks at me angrily and says "I already told you." I very nearly started yelling at the doctor because, you know, she had not already told me, but then another doctor led me to a room full of people on hospital beds and we got the drunk girl squared away. I then traded places with Baeli because her Hebrew is better than mine or Summer's so we thought she should be in there with the doctors and whatnot. When I got back out to the lobby, Summer was on the phone asking the Madrichim when they would have someone there to help the drunk girl. They said that they wouldn't, because they had to lead a hike to the Golan Heights the next day. They also advised that we go home and leave the drunk girl at the hospital. This advice only served to further enrage Summer, who proceeded to lay into them about how we don't speak Hebrew, it is a foreign country/hospital, the drunk girl had no money, no phone, no ID, they (the madrichim) are being paid to help the international students and how, even if it was our responsibility to care for her, we (Summer, Baeli, and I) were not well enough equipped to help in this situation because we don't speak Hebrew or know Israeli hospital procedure. After a few minutes of this they conceded and said they would send someone in an hour. Baeli went back to sit with the drunk girl, while Summer and I sat in the lobby to wait.

We got hungry after a while and went off in search of a restaurant which was advertised as being in the hospital and still open. This when I discovered that Israeli hospitals also contain malls. Had we been there during normal business hours (it was around 3am by that time) we could have eaten at a McDonald's, bought some clothes at the Israeli equivalent to the GAP, and gotten some books and the Israeli equivalent to Borders. But it was the middle of the night so everything was closed except one restaurant called Aroma. We got sandwiches and Beali and Summer had coffee and it was very pleasant. While we were talking over food I realized two things. The first was that this was the first time I had ever been in a hospital, at least insofar as I remember. The second thing was that everyone helping the drunk girl (Summer, Beali, and I) were half black/half white. That doesn't really have any bearing on the situation, but it seems kinda improbable all the same.

Around 4am or so someone from the University got there as did Eytan (they guy I went to Jerusalem with who also happens to know this girl). Eytan said that she was going to be fine and that he would stay with her for the rest of the night so we could go home, which we did. We left the hospital and went to this sketchy little kiosk/bodega thing to see if we could hail a cab. We turned down 3 cabs because they wanted too much money for the ride (they wanted about 70 shekels), but we finally found a guy who would take us back to the University for 50. The one condition was that he wanted to pick up a friend of his first which was a 10 minute or so trip out of our way. We agreed because it was very late and we were tired. The interesting thing about the taxi driver was his voice. Do you remember in Star Wars episode I, that fat little alien hummingbird thing which owned Anakin Skywalker when he was a child? Well this guy sounded exactly like that hummingbird thing. When we got dropped off at the University (it is now about 5 am), we talked with the security guard for a while, because he is also a student and happened to know Baeli. Apparently he had warned her never to drink with Americans because something like that always happens when you do. I can't help but agree.

More Later.