My sister drank gallons of alcohol last night. She also ingested an unknown drug. Then, drunk and stoned, she drove home. Luckily, she didn't crash. She made it home in one piece. Once she got home at 5 a.m., she took 50 Tylenol. Apparantly Tylenol overdoses are pretty dangerous. Then she called her boyfriend and told him she was dying. He came over like he has a million times before and he woke me up. We checked on her and she simply looked passed out. She passes out all the time. She was breathing, and when we shook her, she woke up. So her boyfriend took watch over her like he always does, and I went back to bed. I couldn't sleep, though, so I watched the election coverage for about an hour before I fell asleep. When I awoke at 9:30, my sister's boyfriend told me that she was getting worse and we should take her to the hospital. I went into her room and found the most disturbing thing. She looked, well, for lack of a better term, mentally retarded. You know when you look at someone and you can tell that they are mentally disabled? That's what she looked like. She couldn't talk, she couldn't move.

It was a weird feeling, really, that overtook me. I didn't really feel any emotion. Her boyfriend and I just grabbed her, put her in the back of his car, and drove to the hospital. We got her in there and they took her to a room. I heard them trying to rouse her from behind the curtain, yelling her name. But I didn't feel sad. I walked outside and called my parents, then walked back in to where my sister was, still looking brain damaged. A police officer questioned me about what happened. My parents showed up. It was all a series of events. None of them seemed connected, and none of them affected me. It scared me that I was sad, or nervous, or upset. I only felt one real emotion: anger. I was so angry at my sister. Angry that she treats herself like this. Angry that she does things without stopping to think about how she's affecting other people.

I watched John Kerry's concession speech from the Emergency Room waiting area. My sister's boyfriend had to go off to work. I called Julia a couple times, even though I knew she was at work. The tox screen came back and we learned about her tylenol ingestion. My mom and I went back to my apartment where I brushed my teeth and took a shower while my mom watched Bush's acceptance speech on television.

When we returned to the hospital, my sister had been moved to the ICU. She was sedated and looked even worse than before. But at least when she was asleep she didn't have that scary brain damaged look on her face.

At about 4:30 my father went into the waiting room to call my other sister and tell her what was going on. The nurse kicked my mother and I out of the room to do some test, so we went out to find him. He was talking to my sister and crying his eyes out.

That's when it hit me. My sister might die. She might be a vegetable. She might never fully recover. I have never experienced anything as horrible as seeing my father sobbing. He's supposed to be strong and take care of everything and he just looked so sad, so defeated. All my anger slid away and despair set in. The reality hit me as I saw his tears.

Shortly after my older sister arrived, my younger sister woke up. At first she was disoriented and couldn't really talk, but she got clearer headed through time and by 7:30 she was completely coherent though at times she seemed a bit disoriented. She's going to be ok physically in a couple days according the doctors. Mentally, who knows? She'll have to work on that and hopefully she'll be able to get better.

As I was leaving the hospital tonight at the end of visiting hours, I said to her, "By the way, Bush won the election." She smiled and said, "You're supposed to tell me things that DON'T make me want to kill myself." I think she'll be OK.