Let me try to set the scene….
Bill and I had a wonderful day with friends. We sat at the pool for hours with Tammy, Chris and several other families that reside at Yulan Villa, our compound in Nanjing. After many hours of sun worshipping Bill and I went to Tammy and Chris’s unit for supper. We grilled salmon, tilapia, veggies and had a huge salad with garlic bread. Several bottles of wine and an Eddie Izzard DVD, wonderful evening, oh, we were also joined by a new family to the compound, Bruce and Lynn.
Derek had a party that he went to at another compound for friends that are going home for the summer and was staying the night with one of those buddies.
Bill and I returned home before midnight and went to bed. ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ…
Fast forward to 1:40am….(doorbell rings, again and again)…
I wake up, pull on my skirt (t-shirt already in place) and stumble down two flights of stairs to the door. I know it is not Derek since he knows the door code, so what the heck. Open the door and there are two guys from compound security, two CHINESE guards who do not speak English. We spend the next several minutes playing charades and using my basic language skills…
There is a person at the gate, drunk and passed out.
What the hell, the only person not home is Derek. I am freaking out. Freaking out as putting in mildly, I was scared to death. The guards escort me to the gatehouse which is a short walk but I swear it is about 100 degrees and muggy, my adrenaline has already kicked into overdrive and causing a panic sweat…they show me out the compound to a guy passed out cold in the grass. A foreigner. I cannot describe my relief that it isn’t my son; I may have even swooned a bit from said relief. That joy lasted for only a millisecond because now I am looking at this guy -that may or may not be alive and I don’t recognize him as someone from our compound. Either way, he has now become my problem.
I bend over and check for a pulse (yep, EMT training still in affect ABC’s: airway, breathing, circulation,another sigh of relief…not dead. Holy sweet mother of God, I have to back away from him because the smell of the alcohol is enough to make me dizzy. I look to the guards, of which now there are seven, in hopes of some insight on what to do next.
I say in my best Chinese, “Not my friend, I don’t know.”
Guard: “What?”
Me: “I don’t know.”
Guard: “Friend?”
Me: “No, no friend. I don’t know. Yulan? I don’t know.”
Guard: (blank stare)
This is getting me know where. Passed out dude just sleeping away – now I am pissed, time for action. I bend back down to Mr. Sauced and pinch off his nostrils. Yep, I am not suffocating a stranger in a strange land. What is my life coming to?
Mr. Sauced finally makes the mental connection that he isn’t getting oxygen to his overly intoxicated brain and wakes up. The guards are laughing out loud. This is probably the most entertaining thing that they have seen in their lives.
Mr. Sauced is attempting to communicate but I cannot understand what he is saying…French, English, German, Columbian, Austrian, Swede, Italian, Russian...I say hi in every language I know, I even make up several more. His speech is so slurred but he is answering my questions in English.
Me: Do you live at Yulan?
He: What.
Me: Where do you live?
He: What?
Me: Do you have a business card?
He: What?
Yep, we are getting somewhere now. Mr. Sauced stumbles up and says something about getting a taxi and immediately walks directly into a parked car, falls back to the ground. Yep, he is getting somewhere now.
Me: Do you have a wallet? Billfold? ID? Money? (If I put him in a taxi, can he pay?)
He: Yes.
Me: Can I see it? (He hands me the wallet.)
I go through and find a library card, a subway card, a medical insurance card a little money but no name and no business card. I finally see it….a driver’s license….from New Zealand and his name, Ted. (Name has been changed to protect the idiot.)
Me: Ted, I don’t know where you live. I don’t think you live in Yulan, do you live at Bamboo? (The compound around the block from Yulan.)
Ted: Yes, get taxi.
Me: Ted, Bamboo is just down the block, no taxi. Lets walk.
Ted: I do it myself.
He starts to walk off but nearly wiped out on the curb. I grab one arm and a guard grabs the other and we get him going in the right direction. We followed him around the corner and the guards called the guards at Bamboo Garden to meet us so that they could take over the escort of Ted, who is now able to say the number of his building and his unit number.
The Yulan guards insist on walking me back to my apartment. The whole way they are trying to talk to me and I cannot understand most of what they are saying. I am sure some of it was in reference to the suffocation methods used to revive Ted. I am now hot, sweaty and tired, adrenaline crashing and I want my air conditioning. I tell the guards that I don’t understand what they are saying, Ted was not my friend, just another foolish foreigner, Ted was an ass. Thank you and see you later. Ass is my newest Chinese word.
I make it back home and Bill is waiting on the sofa for the story. I am so thankful that it wasn’t Derek. I assume that Ted made it home and has no memory of our little adventure. My evil side definitely hoped that he has the mother of all hangovers.
