I’m trying to do damage control on a rumor situation at work. Tuesday morning, a coworker was taken to the hospital. Another coworker who was with the sick coworker that morning, who accompanied the coworker and the paramedics to the hospital, has been telling people that the sick coworker was “drunk” that morning. Since then, people have been talking about the sick coworker and her “drinking problem.” When I first heard this, I disputed the “drinking problem,” saying that I’ve hung out with her or had dinner with her before and she could barely finish a glass of wine. I also don’t know her to be drunk. Nevertheless, new allegations came out of the woodwork about how “people” (vague, I know) have “smelled” alcohol on her in the elevator or in interactions with her. I personally have never had this experience, and I work on the same floor with her, and I have for years. Another coworker hypothesized that the sick coworker’s current hallucinations and disorientation are due to her detoxing at the hospital from her drinking. I said I didn’t know people hallucinated when detoxing from alcohol.

The only first-hand information I got was from another coworker who actually spent the past few days in the hospital with sick coworker. Sick coworker seems normal in her speech, except that what she says doesn’t make sense in our reality. For example, she’d claim that this judge or the other is taking care of something right then for her, or that she gave some papers to another clerk, but all of that isn’t true and these people haven’t been in the hospital with her. She’d also pet her shoulder saying that her kitten is there, and point at the floor and express how cute her other kitten is, and of course the kittens aren’t at the hospital with her, either. Things like that. The hospital so far doesn’t have a diagnosis for her condition. She also suffered a seizure the first night she was in the hospital.

Because I live very close to her house, I took her keys and stopped by last nite after work to feed her kittens. I hung out with them for an hour, turned the TV on for some normalcy for them, and after an initial period of shyness, the kittens played, frolicked, chased each other, jumped on my lap, batted my purse strap, and they did eat. I cleaned and refilled the litter box, went thru her fridge and threw out anything that seemed about to rot, such as a leftover salad and some greens. I went through all her cabinets looking for the trash can, trash bags, food for the kitties, etc. The only alcohol in her house is a half-finished glass bottle of wine cooler in her fridge. In her sink, she had some cereal bowls and glasses, but not wine glasses, they were water glasses that may have held milk. In her fridge was skim milk, orange juice, diet Coke, and water. On her TV coffee table was a half-drunk plastic bottle of still water and a smaller bottle of flavored seltzer water. All her wine glasses were put away in her cabinets, seemingly untouched. I’ve never seen a house this dry. My own house has a mini bar/wine rack table that’s holding 12 bottles of wine on the rack, with open bottles of tequila, Bailey’s, whiskey, cognac and sherry sitting on top, plus a bottle of white chilling in the fridge, and heck, I’M not a drinker. So knowing how little I drink and how much variety is in my house — I just remembered I also have at least 15 miniature assorted bottles of alcohol that my flight attendant cousin gave me from her plane — I can imagine what people, if they think sick coworker is a drunk (when she apparently can’t even finish a bottle of wine cooler and has to refrigerate the leftover portion), would think about me if they chanced upon my house as I fell into a strange ailment.

As for drugs, the only drug I saw there was a bottle of potassium vitamin supplements. And yes, I looked in her trash. I had to as I was throwing out stuff and cleaning the litter box. No empty alcohol containers. Some paper and cat food cans.

Maybe this post will reach the coworkers I can’t speak to in person.