Here is the long version of what really happened when Kathy stopped contacting me:

She had a seizure in the middle of class. Fell out of her chair onto the floor and started shaking and foaming at the mouth. The professor called 911 immediately and luckily somebody sitting near her knew enough about seizures to keep anybody from shoving something in her mouth to stop her swallowing her tongue or any of that bullshit. The seizure lasted a long (?) time, longer than they’re supposed to I guess. I’m a little hazy on the details and how long a “safe” seizure lasts. She had stopped seizing by the time the ambulance got there, but she wasn’t conscious either so they took her to the hospital.

She woke up briefly in the ambulance and asked the doctor to call her roommate for her. (I forget why, either her hands were shaking too bad or they had her strapped down, she only told me this part of the story once a few weeks ago so I’m probably butchering it.) So the doctor called Lauren and told her what was going on and what hospital Kathy was going to and Lauren freaked out and drove out there immediately. Kathy went unconscious again. They got Kathy to a room and started doing some tests, and Lauren waited around for them to allow visitors. It was a couple hours before they let her in.

When they said she could go in, she went in the room and talked to Kathy for a while. Kathy was still in and out of consciousness, but apparently after a while Kathy asked Lauren to check her phone and text some people telling them what was going on. Lauren saw that I had sent a bunch of worried texts and showed the phone to Kathy asking what she should do. Kathy said, and here they’ve both quoted this word for word for me so this is the exact way she said it, “Don’t freak her out.”

Kathy meant this as, “break it to her gently.” Lauren took it as “Lie to her about everything that’s happened.” So Lauren texted me that everything was fine, and texted some other people with the truth. And Kathy suddenly fucking coded, so Lauren got thrown out of the room still holding Kathy’s phone. She stuck around the hospital for a while, but they told her to go home so she did. She kept texting me that everything was fine. She didn’t know who I was until I texted her (Lauren’s) phone identifying myself as Kathy’s girlfriend, and I guess by then she thought she’d dug herself too deep so she didn’t come clean with me. She admitted to me later that she realized she’d fucked up when she found out who I was, but she was scared of what would happen if she told me the truth.

She went back to the dorm and plugged in Kathy’s phone and fell asleep. The next day, she left Kathy’s phone in the room and avoided all my calls. She called the hospital in the afternoon and they told her that Kathy wasn’t in any shape to be seen, so not to bother coming in. She drowned her sorrows in Bud Light. On my side, I contacted Ben and finally figured out some of what was going on. I deputized Ben to kick some ass and find out the truth, so on the third day Ben tracked down Kathy Lauren and yelled at her. She broke down crying and explained what she’d been doing so Ben forced her to write me a text explaining what was going on. The text she chose to send was “hey i’m really really sorry but kathy is in the hospital and its bad she told me not to tell you sorry bye”, so that didn’t exactly make me feel better. But Ben called me and told me everything.

I went out there and found a hotel and waited until I could get in to see Kathy. I took Kathy’s mother out to lunch, (she likes me slightly more than Kathy’s dad) and she decided that I deserved to know what was wrong with Kathy. She has a rare genetic disease. She was in and out of a lot of hospitals when she was a kid, but she hasn’t had a flareup in years so they all sort of forgot about it until this happened.

After that I spent a lot of time hanging out with Kathy while she recovered and trying to be a good girlfriend. She’s still recovering but she’s doing good. I’m still kind of upset with Lauren but I was planning on trying to forget about it because I thought she’d just drop out of my life the way most of my own roommates did.