Somewhere, I get a rental car. A nice man walks me out to the car and I have some kind of seizure again, though without full loss of consciousness, just impaired consciousness. This means that I do not remember much, and that for the onlooker, it's clear that something is not right, but they're not sure what. Epileptics are often mistaken for drunks or drug abusers and the like, which is sad. I have taken off my Medical Alert bracelet, so there is nothing to tip him off that he should absolutely not give me this car. I hear him telling me that I must sign this piece of paper and how important it is, but I cannot stop laughing. A feature of some seizures is inappropriate laughter or crying. In this case, I am literally laughing in his face, and I feel terrible about it and want to stop but I cannot. Since he cannot smell alcohol on my breath (I don't drink often) and he has no evidence that I am on drugs (au contraire, I am off drugs, which is precisely the problem), he figures he has no choice but to give me the car.

I drive off in a red sports car with the trunk undone. As I pull out of the parking lot, the attendant tells me the trunk is up and he goes around to close it. Again I laugh and pull out. By now, I am really confused and know that something is wrong, but again, I don't think epilepsy. I just think everyone is being very strange - but not me.

By some miracle, I find my hotel, but only after driving around the airport for about an hour and going in circles. The perfect metaphor. At the hotel, I call my husband who says I sound "weird" and "upset" but I assure him I'm fine and that I just had an event at airport security that was upsetting (this much is true). He says I sound "wonky", our code word for seizury, but since he doesn't' know I'm off of my medicine because I've been lying to him about it (a thing he never deserved and should never have had to put up with) I can hardly tell him the truth. Besides, I still think I'm fine, just upset and nervous.
I order food, argue with the delivery guy on the phone over something, and then I don't remember anything else except noises in the hallway, being afraid to sleep (big tip off that something is not right) and then the next day is an even bigger blur.

Morning arrives, yet for me there is no separation between days. I do not recall the next morning or what I am told happened, only snapshots and those come to me over the series of months that follow the events of these days in early July. My husband says he called my room to make sure I was up. AT home, he would bring me tea and a kiss to wake me up. When I am away on business, it's a phone call and an I love you. When he calls, nobody says hello. The phone is somehow knocked off the hook or perhaps I try to answer it, we don't know. Then he hears a loud crashing, then choking sounds and thrashing sounds. He knows what this means. I am having a seizure and it's bad. Panicked, he calls the hotel's front desk and tells them to immediately send someone up to the room to check on me.