During the second week of quarantine, I woke up to a request to book my AirBNB for the week. Before even opening the message, I joked with my boyfriend Iouri about Chinese divorce rates skyrocketing and how, with all this extra time together, the guest had probably been kicked out of the house.
We didn’t want to be right, but we were dead on. He “needed a few days to figure things out” after he and his girlfriend broke up , so later that day, he came to stay for around a week.
The AirBNB is completely separate and has its own entrance on the first floor, so it’s not much of an intrusion. Sometimes I’d hear him taking a bath or fighting on the phone or cracking a cold one — really not that different from any other guest.
But then on Friday, we heard banging on our front door and went downstairs to find two cops by the welcome mat. When we opened the door, they asked if Patrick* was staying with us. And, just like that, the intrusion was over — that wasn’t the name of our AirBNB guest. We sent them next door since our neighbor also has an AirBNB unit and went back upstairs, relieved.
After not speaking to anyone other than your significant other in person for weeks, cops are a lot. I’ve really only interacted with them as a result of basic traffic violations, but there they were asking to enter my home. My first thought when I spotted them was that I’d somehow broken our stay-at-home order in a catastrophic way. Even in quarantine — or I guess especially in quarantine — I can be a real rule follower and seeing ‘the law’ immediately made me run through almost three weeks of mundanity, looking for possible infringements.
After a few minutes, the pair came back, still looking for Patrick. Apparently, our guest had used his middle name on AirBNB—easy misunderstanding. The cops went on to explain that his brother was so worried about him that he’d called in a wellness check. We immediately let them enter and knocked on the door separating our home from the AirBNB unit. After a couple beats with no response, we unlocked the deadbolt and let the cops go in.
The space was dark, except for the bathroom light, but even from the hallway, I could see it was well stocked with tall boys, prescription bottles and a half-eaten, microwaved gas station meal.
The partners were male and female, so the male agent took the lead going into the bathroom where he found our guests passed out naked on the floor, seemingly after a bath. At that point, we went back upstairs to give them privacy and told the female cop, who was similarly giving the guest space, to call up if she needed anything.
As we waited, I paced. I’d heard a can crack open on the early side of noon and had chalked it up to quarantine and heartbreak. Just the day before, I’d contemplated baking brownies and bringing some down to him, knowing he was grieving, but instead I’d done nothing other than send friendly messages and hope to be free of his burden sooner than later.
The cops called up the stairs to tell us an ambulance was on the way. When they’d asked our guest if he was going to hurt himself, he said, “Maybe,” and that was enough to warrant a hospital trip (in a pandemic) so that he couldn’t harm himself further. They told us he’d be gone for a minimum of 72 hours and then they went back downstairs to dress him and greet the EMTs.
As he left, I felt no relief. Instead, I felt anger — that he would do that in my home. In my safe space.
And in that anger, I found fear that I’d had such a close brush with darkness. That it was so easy to imagine his loneliness and desperation. Just two weeks into quarantine, and I realized the kind of demons this was likely bringing out for people. All the stillness and the waiting. The lack of human connection. The scarcity of resources. Financial loss. Physical loss.
The hospital released our guest after less than one day, not three, and upon getting back to our place, he went right back to 7-Eleven to get two tall boys. I know this because his brother, the same one who’d been concerned enough to call the cops, came to pick him up, and that’s where we found him, double-fisting in line.
With the help of his family, that guest went to rehab, and I’m so glad he’s getting help. But I can’t help but think about those two cops smiling beneath their masks. How, until they came into my home, I didn’t realize the huge scope of their job.
Those cops were kind and seemingly competent, but should they be the first on the scene for a potential suicide attempt? For addiction and a whole slew of mental health cases? I tend to think not.
As our country has shifted from the collective pause of quarantine to the collective action of protests and legislation, I’ve realized how much better this could have been handled if a mental health professional—with the appropriate funding and infrastructure—took the lead instead.
If you’ve made it this far are still bothered by the call to #defundthepolice, I implore you to contemplate a world where we invest in our communities, instead of a militant police force. Where we go after the cause—education, mental health, housing, etc.—and not the crime. Above all, I ask you to be open to change, especially your own change of heart.
*Name changed for anonymity