A blog-worthy ending to an otherwise uneventful evening

Last Thursday I went out with some friends to Jake's, a bar/concert venue a few blocks down the street from where I live. Jake's is okay. The advantages of good drink specials and proximity to my home outweigh the disadvantages of (a) a cover charge and (b) drawing a less-than-visually-pleasing crowd (seriously, this is a phenomenon I have noted on each of the three occasions I have been there).

Either way, I had a rather uneventful night. I put down a few drinks, but nothing monumental. Having returned home, I remembered that I was leaving for my cousin's wedding the following day, and that I should probably at least bring in the laundry from my car. Previously, I had washed it at my friends' house because I have no washer/dryer. Some of it was still wet and needed to be hung up to dry. So I walked on out into the parking lot behind my building.

Randomly enough, as I was wrestling the laundry bucket out of the trunk, I became aware of another person in the parking lot who had just staggered through the bushes. I didn't really look up, figuring that it would be better if I didn't make eye contact with whatever potted hooligans were up and about at 2:45 in the morning.

Turned out it was just one potted hooligan, who wasn't really engaging in hooliganism at all. I looked up when I heard him saying "Please, please man, I need some help." It was another student obviously, who was shirtless and covered with blood. This was, of course, rather shocking, but since he was not in any way aggressive or trying to touch me, I gathered my laundry and told him to go sit on my stoop.

His nose was swollen and, I imagine, broken. I couldn't drive him to the hospital, since I myself was a little bit spirited still from Jake's. M, let's just call him by initial, was really, really bloody -- so just leaving him was also not an option. I told him that I was thinking of calling an ambulance, and I asked him if he thought that he needed medical attention. He and I agreed that yes, he did need medical attention. I told him I was going to call an ambulance, and asked if he had any objection to that. He did not. M was a wreck, so I gave him some water and told him to drink up. He was pretty distraught, and apologized a whole bunch of times. I felt really bad for the guy.

I called 911, and a cop came within the next two minutes. The cop asked M for ID and if he remembered who beat him up. He did not. He said he was just walking along the streets and someone punched him. Obviously, the kid was lights-out drunk, since he had told me the same thing. M was completely cooperative with the cops, so the cop I assume went easy on him and just sent him with the ambulance. The cop asked me for my contact info, and whether I knew anything else about the whole incident. Clearly I did not, so that's where things ended.

The ambulance lingered a little longer... because someone had passed out in a doorway across the street. Soon the whole cavalcade left, and I got to bed sometime around 4:00. To date, I have not heard anything more about the incident.

I feel bad, since ambulance rides are decidedly not free. Furthermore, I don't know how old he was, which has some pretty serious legal implications if he was underage. But what else was there to do? He said he lived on a street that was completely not the direction he was walking, and he was clearly very very spirited. I stand by my decision.