I arguably helped save my sweetie’s brother’s life by being a big grouch on a trip to New York.
Back in the summer of '03 we took a trip out to NJ where sweetie was recording and editing a CD for a church choir there. Since I’d never been, we took time for a two day trip to NYC and stayed in his brother’s apartment for the night. He was out of town at the time, but his roommate was there and was fine with having guests for an evening.
We’d taken a morning train in, and by evening I was sick, felt like crap and had also decided I hated New York, the apartment was a dump, everything was filthy and ugly (I have since reconsidered my first opinions) and I just wanted to go home. I left sweetie to converse all by himself with the gracious roommate and huddled in bed feeling sorry for myself.
The next day I was much improved and felt guilty about being terribly rude the day before, so we picked up a rather nice bottle of vodka and left it with a note apologizing for my anti-socialness and thanking him for his hospitality. We did a little more sightseeing, and caught the train back to NJ.
Did I mention the date? August 14th.
We arrived back at his ersatz editing studio, packed up his equipment and returned to the front office to give back the keys, where the secretary confused us by saying “Oh good, you got out in time.” Seems that during our transit, all the lights in the Northeast had gone out. (There had been an odd moment when the train stopped for a minute before continuing. We realized later that had we gone to see Times Square like we’d been considering, we would have left on a later train that was under the Hudson River when the power died.) The town in NJ we were staying in never lost power. We counted ourselves lucky, and headed home.
About a month later, sweetie’s brother was looking for a new roommate. The fellow who’d hosted us had sheltered a female coworker who couldn’t make it to her own home that night. They’d found the bottle of vodka, shared it in the dark, and apparently one thing led to another, and he decided he’d rather live with the attractive female coworker than the 40-something long-haired heavyset divorced folk musician guy. No problems, no hard feelings; we commented at the time that it’s funny how things work out sometimes.
New roommate was a nice Eastern European immigrant and they hit it off well. New roommate also happened to be a light sleeper, which is where the life-saving part comes in. One night a couple of years later new roommate wakes up very early in the morning to noises in the bathroom. He found sweetie’s brother vomiting blood. He very nearly bodily carried brother to the hospital and against his wishes notified his sister who lives in Connecticut. Turns out he had a ruptured blood vessel in his esophagus and had he not gotten to the hospital within the hour would have bled to death internally. As well, according to the sister, I’m sorry to say, the treatment he was receiving improved drastically after she arrived and the hospital realized they weren’t dealing with some indigent drunk with questionable hygiene but a man with family who in fact gave a crap if he lived or died. He recovered, and is today doing better than he ever had at any time before in his career.
If I hadn’t been a crummy guest, we probably wouldn’t have left the bottle of vodka.
If we hadn’t left the vodka, the original roommate might not have hit it off the way he did with his coworker, and may not have moved out when he did.
If original roommate hadn’t moved out when he did, new roommate would have ended up living somewhere else.
If the brother had had a different roommate, less likely to wake up at odd sounds, or less likely to insist on going to the hospital, or less likely to call the sister when he did, things may not have had a happy ending.
It is indeed funny how things work out sometimes.