My phone rang from its spot on the nightstand. Hilary.

Bleary-eyed, I saw the red numbers of my alarm clock. 4:44.

I answered in a thick voice, with a slow mind. She was talking about the doorknob falling off. She couldn’t open the door. She was trapped. And she was cry-laughing, sounding hysterical.

I could almost understand. I was swimming through the weeds, almost to the surface.

“I have to go to the bathroom, but I can’t get out of the bedroom.”

Ohh. Ok. My roommate was trapped. But not in her room. She’s house-sitting.

I was up now. And starting to ask questions to understand the situation. There’s only one door out, and she was on the second floor. The doorknob had come detached, the short end on her side. She couldn’t turn the latch. The keys to the house were downstairs, and so was the code to the garage. I could come over, but we’d have to call someone else for the code or a spare key.

“I tried to open it with my sunglasses. I don’t know what to do. I really need to go to the bathroom.” Here the laugh-sobs get stronger.

Ok. Calmly I replied, “It sounds like the urgency of getting out is because you have to pee so bad. Is there somewhere you can pee in the room?”

(Did that really come out of my mouth? Is this really happening?)

She put me down. I took apart my own doorknob to think of things to suggest. The contingency plan was to go over there, have her call and get the code. The step before that would be me going over and getting a screwdriver up to her. The best was to get something in that door that would open it up.

“Ok. I peed in a rain boot and threw it out the window.”

Sweet.

In the end, she jimmied the latch with the straightened hanger. Plan A worked.

(Her version.)