I called his close friend, Jack, who had also been at the party, for the pertinent information and gave him a truncated version of events. He lived nearby and rushed to my place while the paramedics reassembled Keith in his dog costume, thoughtfully omitting his whiskers and ears. They lifted Keith onto their gurney and wheeled him to the ambulance, evoking curiosity from my neighbors, who had woken to sirens this morning. Jack offered me a ride and we followed Keith and the ambulance to the hospital several miles away.

“I hope he’ll be okay,” I said. “One minute he was fine and the next he was convulsing. It came on out of nowhere."

Jack was equally concerned, but unsurprised. “He shouldn’t have been drinking last night. He knows this can happen."

“Keith only had two or three beers. What’s that got to do with anything?”

“Sometimes it can trigger his symptoms. You know he has epilepsy, right?”

I’d had no idea, and wouldn’t have just watched him drink if I’d known. “No, why didn’t he tell me?”

As we drove, Jack explained Keith’s symptoms and that he was self-conscious about revealing them, particularly to women, because there were so many myths surrounding epilepsy. Jack was protective of his friend’s vulnerability.

Unbeknown to me, Jack had also called Keith’s mom, Mrs. Crutcher, before departing for my home. I realized this when she ran up to Jack and me as we entered the emergency room on the heels of Keith and the paramedics. 

It was 6:00 a.m. Sunday and she'd just seen paramedics wheel her son, dressed as a dog from the neck down, into an exam room. 

Mrs. Crutcher put her hand on my shoulder. "What were you doing when Keith had his seizure?" Her voice was fraught with motherly concern. A retired Catholic school principal, perhaps she needed to believe that my hair, a rabid post-coital mess, was merely a fashion choice and not evidence. 

I bit my cheeks.

"Were you having breakfast?" she asked, hopefully. I couldn't answer. I knew if I opened my mouth, I’d laugh until I choked.

"Yes, Mrs. Crutcher. They were having breakfast," Jack reassured her, in an act of heroism for all concerned. 

Then, in the-I’m-glad-you’re-alive-now-I’m-going-to-kill-you gear-shift endemic to parenthood, she asked, “Why was Keith drinking last night? Jack said he drank at the party. Keith knows alcohol can give him a seizure.” With that, she headed toward Keith’s exam room, like a TV detective intent on getting to the bottom of things. 

Jack and I looked at each other. “Oh, man,” he said. 

“Yeah,” I sighed and we trod toward the waiting room.

The next afternoon, Keith called and asked me to dinner the next Saturday. He was at work, so we kept things brief and neither of us mentioned the incident directly. When he picked me up Saturday night, our conversation was customarily goofy and remarkably free of awkwardness. Because I’d been twenty-four when CFIDS hit and had spent the first four months in a wheelchair, undergoing copious tests and told (erroneously) that might die soon, hospitals didn’t rattle me. I felt bad Keith had epilepsy, but didn’t treat him differently than I had at the Halloween party. If nothing else, I found him cuter in his Levi’s and button-down shirt.