I’d just asked for the dessert menu when a woman collapsed across our table.The after work crowd densely packed into Brennan’s faux Irish Pub (as a demonstration of authenticity, I’d had a jerk chicken sandwich while Chaz enjoyed spicy beef enchiladas.) Happy hour was in full swing. At first, I thought she was drunk. She came from the bar area, stumbled once, then fell to the floor at Chaz’s feet. Suddenly, he was on the ground with a stranger draped across him and overturned chairs everywhere. Someone at the adjacent table shouted, “She’s having a seizure!” The news made him look like he might have one of his own.

She didn’t twitch. Her eyes didn’t roll up into her head. She lay half in his lap, half on the floor, breathing hard and not answering any questions. The diagnosis was delivered with such certainty I assumed the people at the next table must’ve recognized her condition from experience. After all, in my ignorance I thought she’d drunk herself into a stupor. They sounded like they knew better. The staff was flustered. They kept asking if we wanted to take her home. I tried telling them we didn’t even know her, but they couldn’t hear me over Bono singing, “Where the Streets Have No Name.”

It took about ten minutes for those of us at the surrounding tables to figure out we all thought someone else had called 911. After all, someone came over to snap a cellphone photo. I thought they were emailing it to friends or family of the woman on the ground - not playing tourist. Around then, I realized the armchair diagnosis was the guess of a stranger, not a statement based on experience with this woman.

By the time Chaz disentangled himself from her our table had been shoved up against two others to make room on the floor. I felt like an ass, but it seemed like a good time to ask for the check. The waitress asked if we still wanted pie. A manager elbowed her way to us and shouted over Bono, “How much has she had to drink tonight!” I mimed, “Don’t know. Never met her.” The manger rolled her eyes. I was obviously lying.

We managed to worm our way out of the restaurant just as EMS arrived. I still don’t know whether the woman fell down drunk or fell down from a seizure. Either way, they carried her out.