End of a long few days. I went to a party last Thursday and at some point (oh, third beer or so) got my friend to call her neighbor, who I had been casually seeing but who had not been in touch for a few weeks. She called, and he maintained that he was still ill. I was just about ready to go have the "come to Jesus meeting" about whether we were still hanging out, when he came driving up the dirt driveway, looking like he was dying.

I kid you not, the man was yellow-green, shaking, sweating, clammy, incoherent. Scared me shitless.

For about three weeks he had been complaining of flu symptoms, but hadn't seen the doctor until about 4 days before I saw him in the drive. The check back was Friday. I convinced him to come home with me to Tacoma, fearing that he wouldn't make it through the night.

Got some broth into him a couple of times, after which he would feel nearly well. Then he'd slip back into that evil place where he couldn't track or finish a thought and was clammy and sweating. Got him through the night, dropped him at home, and met up with him at the doctor's office later Friday morning.

Well, when he got out of the van at the Health Center, he looked like a bad Halloween joke. It took only a few minutes in the waiting room before he was offered a room, and then only a few minutes before he was getting an EKG and the paramedics were taking him to Harborview. In the course of ten minutes, he had soaked the gurney. His heart rate was up around 170 (normal might be 60-80) and clearly he was in distress. Watching a 6'5" man cry is more than a bit unnerving.

I followed the ambulance onto the ferry, then to Harborview, our region's level III trauma center. Too bad he didn't have a sharp object stuck in his head; they would have known exactly what to do.

They took ultrasound of his liver, gall bladder and stomach. He had an echocardiogram (pretty cool watching the valves work). They took gallons of blood.

The upstart is that he's still there four days later, and has been diagnosed with diabetes, among other things. He still has some kind of virus he's fighting, and they can't figure out what it is. The docs know he's a plumber and as such has come into contact with any number of disgusting biotic agents, such as hepatitis and giardia. They keep asking him about livestock and foreign travel, but those have proven to be dead ends. He's not the randy player type, so I don't think they're looking into any heinous STDs of any kind.

I watched his heart rate go from under 130 while lying down to 170 when he stood up to use the bathroom. That's the difficulty - they can't send him home when his heart rate is so high and virtually unable to be regulated.

I've bought him clothes to come home in (the ones he had on were filthy and he'd been in them for days). We don't know when that will be. But he has begun talking to his family about going home to NZ where he can get free medical care and can be monitored by someone, rather than living in the woods without the macho necessary to carry it off.

My duty will be done when we've gotten him healthy enough to fly. Well, I may go to his place and make sure his kids get the things he intends that they have. Of course the kids are quite worried about him, but overall his friends and family are relieved that he has finally gotten to a hospital where he can't hide out from getting help.

I'm knackered, as the Kiwis say. Off to bed. Call me when they canonize me. Until then I'm asleep.