A most jarring 24 hours.

At 3:30 am Saturday morning, I was woken by loud knocking on my door. I bolted upright, heart pounding. Bizarrely, my first thought was, "They're here to get me!"

I called out: "Who is it?"

"Joiner!"

"What's wrong?" I said, stumbling out of my bed and toward the door.

Frantically knocking on the RA's door, she said, "I need help! I need to go to the hospital!"

"What?" The RA came to the door.

"I've been throwing up for the past hour, and I think I'm going to pass out."

"Call 911!" the RA said, and I ran for the phone.

"911. I have you calling from ---- State Street. What is your emergency?"

"My friend -- she's been throwing up, she thinks she's going to black out," I blurted out.

Joiner did not look good. Ghost white, her lips were purplish and blue, her skin clammy.

The dispatcher said that an ambulance would be on the way. I went downstairs to grab Joiner's coat and shoes. In a few minutes, a fire truck pulled up outside our building. The phone rang.

"Hello?"

"This is the emergency operator. Can you let the firemen in?"

"Yes, yes, someone's gone down to let them in."

The EMTs and firemen took Joiner's vitals, asked her some questions, and we went downstairs, into the ambulance, and to the hospital, where it took 10 minutes to check Joiner in. Then we waited. 5 minutes passed. 10 minutes.

I went up to the counter, "Um, is a doctor coming? It's been 10 minutes."

"Yes, they're coming. I put a note on the nurses' station. They know."

Another 5 minutes passed. A doctor came out with a patient, looked at us, and then went back inside.

Finally, a nurse came out and we went into the triage room, where she took Joiner's blood pressure. It was a little high but within normal range. Joiner gave her the details, and the nurse took us back into the ward.

A bit later, a doctor came by and listened to Joiner's story again. Recommended a saline drip and an anti-nausea medicine, mentioning that there had been a nasty flu going around.

After an hour or so, Joiner's nausea was under control, and the saline bag was half empty. The nurse came by and asked if she wanted to go home. Um, shouldn't you be making that determination? we wondered. But Joiner was feeling better. We hypothesized that she had been suffering a bit of a panic attack while she threw up back at the dorm, and was okay now. The nurse called a car from Crimson Security to take us home. We had to wait nearly an hour for it, but it finally came, and we went back to the dorm.

Joiner went to sleep around 8:30 am, and I went to my parent-child mediation training, which I begged off of, since I was so tired. It was a bit of a blessing, actually, since I didn't really want to do it.

Went to bed around 9 am and sleep soundly until noon, and then again until 3:30 pm, when Joiner called. She was fine, but felt quite empty, so we went to the store and got her some soup and me a sandwich.

Discombobulated by the events of the day, and by the unexpected free time, I spent a hour or two straightening my room, dealing with receipts from the two recruiting trips I'd taken, and returning phone calls, one of which was to Neener. I happened to catch her on her way to the gym, so I said I'd meet her there and hang out a bit.

Did so, and then remembered that I was supposed to meet Mr. Destroyer for a drink tonight. Called and asked if he were still interested, which he was, so I went home, changed, and went.

Mr. Destroyer is living off-campus this year, serving as a RA-type person in an undergrad dorm. His room is a bit like an apartment, actually, and with lemon chiffon/pale daffodil paint in the living room and the sage green in the bedroom, it felt quite civilized.

We had one of his bottles of wine, which was also quite civilized. Two kinds of cheese. Crackers. Toast. Tea. We listened to jazz and classical music -- I discovered a new Baroque composer whom I liked. Occasionally he went out to check on the party in one of the kids' rooms, and regulate the noise. Upon invitation, I curled up in his very expensive leather chair. Which was luxuriously comfortable, in a very manly way.

Conversation ranged from our job choices this coming summer to the nature of passion. At one point he asked if I ever felt passionate about people. After thinking about it, I think I do feel deeply moved by my relationships with certain family members, and said so. I don't remember what he said about that.

We talked about money, and parents. Late in the evening, around 12:30 or so, he asked why I didn't trust him, referencing something I said the last time I saw him, when -- in my defense -- I was pretty trashed and was trying to answer his inherently unanswerable question about why I wasn't more open with him.

I said that I wanted some assurance that the people I confided in were going to treat my confidences with a certain respect, would value those confidences. And that maybe I needed to feel that those people cared about me. Whereupon he said, "So I've failed in both respects." And laughed.

I think I said it remains to be seen.

All this was ... odd. Double M advised a while ago that I avoid Mr. Destroyer. That would undoubtedly be the wiser course of action. I have only seen Mr. Destroyer twice this semester, but they've been strange interactions for me, full of doubt about motives and wariness about being drawn into the Destructo-sphere. Mr. Destroyer is a Destroyer, afer all, and I am just as susceptible to destruction as any one. It's odd to recognize that trait in someone, and yet feel drawn toward them. But that's the way it is with Destroyers.