Time for a story. A somewhat long-winded, distasteful story.
Today I went to take a bus to visit my mom in the hospital. At the last minute, my sister and our roommate decided to join me. Five minutes before the bus arrived, they went off together to the nearby liquor store and picked up two six-packs of beer. Then the bus came and we got on. About a third of the way on the trip, they decided to get off the bus (probably for a smoke and a beer), and catch up later. So I went the rest of the way. I got to the hospital and visited my mother for about a hour? Maybe only a half hour? My sister and the roommate hadn't arrived yet, so I phoned her. She answered and told me they were on their way; they just needed to figure out which bus to take. I then decided to leave; I wanted to do some shopping and get home to fix supper.
About an hour and a half later, I arrived home. First thing I did was call my sister. Lo and behold, it turns out she and the roommate got into an argument after visiting mom and he had left without her. I asked where she was and what she was doing; she told me she was walking home. Well, there's almost 17 km between the hospital and home, so there was no way in hell she'd be able to walk that far. I told her to walk back to the hospital and wait at the bus stop in front until the bus arrived. She didn't want to do that, she wanted to keep walking. I then started yelling into the phone for her to do what I told her. She said she would. The conversation ended there.
A half-hour later, I phoned her again because to know see how she was doing. She hadn't listened to me, she'd continued to walk. I really started to lose my cool and began SCREAMING at her to listen to me. She said she would. I said okay, to phone me back.
Another half-hour later. She didn't phone, so I did again. Same ****ing bullshit. And now she was too far away from the hospital and had lost her bearings. I told her to go to a gas station or someplace and figure out where she was and figure out how to catch a bus from there. She said she'd do that. I told her to phone me back, again.
Another half-hour. I phoned her. Take a wild guess what happened. Now she said she was close to her boss' residence, that she'd stop by there and try to get a lift from him. End of conversation.
Another half-hour. Goddammit, she was still walking. I don't know if her boss wasn't at home or if she'd even stop there. She just told me she was going to walk home. Now she was about 8 km from home, still too far away. She began crying into the phone and blaming the roommate for ditching her. I told her to walk to the university in the area and take a bus home from there. She still wouldn't listen to me.
Sometime after this, I went outside and a found the roommate had made it back home. He told me about how they'd visited my mother, but then as they were leaving, they got into an argument about which bus to take back. He got on, she didn't. Oh, and those two six-packs they'd bought? She'd drank most of it, according to him. The rest you know about.
Well, I then tried phoning her again. She didn't pick up. I tried ringing her five or six times and she refused to answer. So then I phoned the police. I told them what I knew, where I believed her to be, and gave a description of her. They took everything down and told me they'd do a patrol of the area to see if they could find her. After my conversation with the cops was over, I tried phoning her again multiple times, again to no effect.
Twenty minutes later, give-or-take, the police phoned me back. They'd picked her up. Dressed all in black, she'd almost been hit by a car, but luckily hadn't been. Angry and drunk, she caused a scene. So the police brought her back to the station and tossed her in the drunk tank for the night. My mother was informed about what had gone down as well.
I phoned my mother at the hospital to see how she was doing. She was upset, as can be expected. I told her to relax and rest. Then we said goodnight.
After my sister got into the accident which totalled her jeep some weeks back, we had made a decision together that she'd stop drinking. She did stop — for a week. Then she started drinking again, but only beer. Seems even that is too much for her to handle.