It was a normal Saturday night.

11:30: My hubby was playing NLF2K3 and enjoying many beers as he is wont to do on Saturday. My little boy was in bed asleep, and I'm talking to people on AIM. Then the phone rings, and it's my sister-in-law, who wants to speak to Kris. She sounds upset, and I can tell something is wrong from the way Kris's voice swiftly changes from chipper to concerned.

So they talk, and I listen in to what my husband is saying, trying to pick up what's going on at her end. She's upset, thinking her life is a mess, apparently. Booze and depression mixed together, we all know what that adds up to. Well, after a few minutes of talking, my sister-in-;aw announces that this is the last time she'll be talking to him. She says she's bleeding a lot now, she tells him that she always loved him the most and hangs up.

My husband is hysterical. He thinks his sister has slit her wrists. He also thinks she may have a gun. (He is drunk himself, you see, and things may have been different had at least one of them been sober.) Either way, he is panicked beyond any sort of rational action. I take the phone and start by calling 911 here in Minnesota, since we have no idea what the number for the police is in Illinois where she lives. After a few minutes on hold, I have a number to call, and I do. I start to explain what happened or what we believe has happened, and it's made difficult by the fact that my husband is throwing up because he thinks she may already be dead, and that we cannot find his sister's address, only her phone number.

They tell us the police have arrived at her house, and to wait to hear from them. So we call their mother. She's awake, and she has a different story to tell. Kris's sister told their mother she cut her knee on accident. They are talking about the apparent fight she and her husband had and about how he stormed out of the house. Then she notices that there are about 20 police cars outside her house. She locks her door to keep them out, and they break it down. The last thing Kris's mom hears is her daughter screaming at the cops, then the phone is dropped.

The police dept. calls their mom and updates her, and she calls and updates us. Did she try to hurt herself? We're not sure. She was hauled out of the house in handcuffs and taken to the local mental hospital to spend the night. The hospital called us for a bit of info, and told us that she had been put away for the night, where she was still screaming at everyone. I don't know what happened, I don't know what's going to happen - she thinks her husband is cheating on her, that he left her, Kris -told- her that he'd cheated before; a fact she didn't know and Kris didn't realize he'd revealed until I told him I'd heard him say it - I think it might develop into a big mess on that end... or it may not. Truth be told, his sister packs away beer and JD like few people I've ever seen, and when she's drunk she's irrational, accusational, and frightening. Maybe they can get her into a 12 step program, cause she and her husband, together or separate, really really need to be in one.

Well, that was my night. Fear and partial relief. I didn't enjoy it very much at all. By the end I felt like I wanted to throw up too.