We respond as backup to an officer from the Madison Police Department. We find the girl lying in some overgrown brush near Dayton Street. She looks terrible. Her friends left her. The guys she met at the house party just can't handle her anymore. They look afraid. Neither guy knows who she is. When asked her last name, she incessantly tries to spell the name of her dorm—spelling it S-e-l-e-e-e-r-i. Her head leans back. Gazing at the stars vapidly, her mirth turns to sorrow. Her eyes look lifeless. She smiles. Succumbing to some unseen, but tacitly understood, pain she lurches forward. Only her wavering arms keep her from kissing dirt.
I briefly return to the squad car to gain perspective on what I'm seeing. Tonight I'm riding shotgun with Officer Brent Plisch of the University of Wisconsin Police Department. It had been three fruitless hours of driving. At approximately 1 a.m. my luck changed.
It takes both the UW and MPD officers to help her stand and walk. She motions toward the back door of the cruiser she is now pressed against.
""I got it,"" she slurs.
She does not.
Plisch stresses she is not under arrest, but she must be cuffed if she's riding in the back of his squad car. She's too intoxicated to refuse.
This is common.
According to Plisch, those taken to detox rarely struggle, they are rarely capable of it. It is not intoxication that gets her taken to detox, but incapacitation.
The officers open the door and check her pockets. They determine she is clean and help her into the backseat, sitting her upright. We drive off. Plisch tells me it is a five-to-seven-minute ride to the detox facility on Industrial Boulevard.
""It can be a long five to seven minutes though,"" he says, ""especially if she starts vomiting, which I'm betting she will.""
He then turns to me and asks me if I'm a sympathetic vomitter.
I shrug and say, ""I guess we'll find out...""
Her head slumps forward. She pounds ""I'm so stupid"" on the interior divider with her head. Plisch rolls down the windows for her to vomit. After a minute she calms significantly. She fidgets, shakes, pulsates—call it what you will, it might not be much, but it's a good sign. If she stops moving it'll mean an ambulance ride to the hospital.
Five to seven minutes later the squad car pulls up to a humble little building in a part of town I don't recognize. He parks the cruiser as close to the door as possible. She is prepped and prompted to get out of the cruiser. It takes significant coercion. Eventually she is physically helped out of the car.
She looks worse now. We take her inside. The building smells of vomit, sweat, ash and cheap booze, all tinged with Lysol. We all enter a small, yellow, concrete room. The two officers along with a blonde woman and mustached man put her in a waiting wheelchair. Getting her to sit takes much less coercion. She holds her head in her hands. Craning it backwards, she looks ashamed.
Numbers steadily climb on the breathalyzer. She registers a .23 blood alcohol concentration, well above the state's limit—.08. Plisch would later tell me it was a ""really weak"" blow, and she was likely much more intoxicated. She vomits again, still mostly saliva. She's still smiling.
They ask her a barrage of questions: Did she take any other drugs? What did she drink? Might she be pregnant? Does she have any medicine allergies or health problems? Has she ever been to alcohol programs? Does she have depression or other mental issues? She answers as best she can.
They ask her identification questions. Zero, one, zero. She just repeats this gibberish, earnestly believing she is giving them answers, even becoming a bit angry when they ask her the same question more than once. Major: zero, one. Year: zero, one. Hometown: zero, one, zero. She is adamant.
Finally tells them her hometown in Minnesota. It's not too far from where I grew up. She continues repeating the two numerals between bouts of insisting she is fine.
The mustached gentleman tells her they'll find her a bed, let her sleep, feed her some breakfast and send her home. She likes that proposition. She's smiling.
Plisch gives her his card and tells her he'll come to her dorm to check up on her after 9 p.m. tomorrow. He tells her not to drink tomorrow night and writes all the instructions on the business card so she'll remember.
They take her blood pressure and temperature. I can hear the woman mutter that it's low before she tells the mustached man to heat a blanket in the dryer. I strain my eyes to see the readout. 96 degrees. She announces it to the room when she's sure, along with her blood pressure: 90/58. My officer seems to wince.
Out of the entryway, we roll her into a big room. Someone argues loudly on his cell phone for a ride home, while the attendant tries to remind him he's not allowed to leave. He doesn't listen and keeps yelling for a ride so he can sleep and get to work in the morning.
According to Carol, the head nurse, those brought to detox are considered in protective custody, a state statute which mandates the placement of the incapacitated in a secure facility. Only after a stay of at least 12 hours, meeting with a counselor to discuss if drinking is an ongoing problem and blowing a .00 is a patient allowed to leave detox. Plainly said, the fellow on his cell phone will probably be late for work tomorrow.
We roll her into a smaller, dingier room, worse lit, all concrete—floor to ceiling. Two hospital-style beds, the concrete and nothing else. The blonde woman and the MPD officer get her into bed. Plisch nudges me with his arm, and, pointing to the opposite side of the room whispers ""completely oblivious."" I realize there's someone occupying the other bed in the room. The form doesn't wake, doesn't flinch, doesn't move. Incapacitated.
Our girl keeps telling everyone she is all right. She's still smiling. They turn on her side, into the recovery position. The last time I see her face, she's smiling. Before passing out she audibly whispers to the nurse, ""Listen, I'm not really OK."" The nurse empathizes, tucks her in and motions us to follow her out of the room. I look back trying to see her face again. Although obscured by blanket, I can't shake the feeling she is smiling.
""Do they always smile like that?"" I ask Plisch as we re-enter the squad car.
""Yeah, they're just happy,"" he said, turning his attention to the road and darkness, ""happy to be alive.""
