GUEST COLUMNIST: Fling: knowing when to say when

Danielle Justo, Guest Columnist Danielle Justo, Guest ColumnistSalt.Danielle Justo, Guest ColumnistSalt.Tequila.Danielle Justo, Guest ColumnistSalt.Tequila.Lemon.Danielle Justo, Guest ColumnistSalt.Tequila.Lemon.It went down easy this time; not with all the fuss and gagging like the vodka. I didn't really want to have another drink, they seemed like they were all done. Hell, she broke a shot glass when she made me a slammer. There were shards and liquid all over the desk. I was staring at it while there were reds, blues and greens jumping all around me in the pounding and the dancing and the screaming. It wasn't a lot. Honestly. It just was more than I had ever drunk in under an hour. It was definitely less than an hour. Time doesn't mean much to me, though, and I really have trouble figuring it out. Sometime before midnight I was singing in those wood-floored Quad hallways. I remember how tired I was of waiting and how I wanted to go. And that's all. The rest I was told. I was a freshman. I had not even touched alcohol in high school and had spent all year finding my tolerance. Two years ago, I was walking up the street in a group -- a wild, drunken group, on the way to a fraternity house. I was lost in this sea of noise until I stumbled on to the steps and then began throwing up, and then two of my friends tried to walk me to the hospital. He was pulling me up off the pavement -- me, wet with vomit, falling to the ground. Some guys across the street in a house called the police. I don't remember walking into the emergency room where I worked. I don't remember being brought in. It was midnight. A doctor for whom I did research brought me into trauma where they began pumping carbon in my stomach and as my other friends got there, she asked whether I had been taking drugs. "No, just alcohol," they said. I can picture myself, as I had seen so many others at work, being wheeled in and the wet clothes stripped off. I can picture all the white coats and green scrubs of the doctors and nurses around me, but I don't remember this; I don't remember anything. I don't know if it really did happen. But it did. They told me when I woke up in pieces the next morning. I woke up one sense at a time. First, I could hear him; I could hear her. My roommate and my RA were talking about me to my father and I could hear his muffled response. Then it was bright under my eyelids, but I couldn't see anything. She put my teddy bear by my left side and I could feel it there. I said thanks. I said something, I know I did. But there was something preventing the words from leaving my throat and I only thought I had said them. The nurse began pulling it out. The respirator buried deep inside my body and I couldn't breathe; I couldn't see; I couldn't hear. All I could do was crunch my pain up tight and follow it up out of my throat. I felt this tremendous force that hurt like nothing I had ever felt before. When it was out, I choked. I choked up black and tried to wipe it off my face with the back of my hand. I inched up and squinted around. No contacts, I couldn't see. I could barely make out my father. My grandparents. My RA. My roommate. She cleaned my face. "You know you scared us all to death. You went into a coma last night." They told me how they were worried, how they were upset, how stupid I was. My friends came with flowers and a card. My father wouldn't speak to me. I could feel him crying. Then they all left me. The nurse was harsh, telling me what an idiot I was. I was this child in a hospital gown, stubborn and wanting to go home, but they made me stay overnight. I squinted at a television, not adjusted yet to the light. Then I just drank broth and kept changing the channels until I fell asleep. I woke up in the middle of the night with my IVs inching at the back of my hands and an awful headache. I rang for the nurse and she didn't come. I stared in the dark trying to figure out what was going to happen. My body wouldn't sleep anymore and my mind didn't want to be awake. I was pulling at thoughts in my head -- what had I done? I had fallen apart. There was no more high school pony-tailed little girl in this body anymore. She had screwed up. Now she had disappeared. I had almost died. It was the most awful dreamless thud of sleep that came over me finally until a cardiologist came to stick circles all over me for an ECG. I couldn't sleep after that. They brought me more juice and a psychologist. He kept asking me if I was trying to commit suicide. He wouldn't believe me for a while. After that, they sent a Catholic girl and a rabbi to see if I needed any "spiritual guidance." My mother burst in; my father had gone back to Connecticut to bring her. She kept trying to feel me and kept talking and talking. But my father still wouldn't speak to me. They walked me to the Quad. She told me to call and kept asking if I needed anything. He hid his eyes and hugged me and said into my ear, 'lay off the booze." With that, I went into all the mess of my dorm and sat down on my bed, watching my friends drink.