Last night, this was what I was watching.

Bryn failed to come home after school yesterday, and after over 3 1/2 hours of calling his cell phone, calling his friends and his girlfriend, I finally found out where he was. His girlfriend at first was lying to me saying that he was with her, but I certainly wasn't buying it...especially when I told her that I wanted to talk to him and she said "ummmmm....he's in the bathroom". After another hour of calling, I finally got it out of her where he was, or at least the address, and she apologized to me for lying "I don't like lying, it's not my forte, but I knew that Bryn was probably already still in trouble for the ""other thing"" ((that being getting arrested)) and I didn't want him to get in anymore".

After finally speaking with Bryn (around 6:30pm) and verifying the address of his whereabouts, I told him that I would be over to pick him up, along with a few other things. Such as, "don't even think about leaving. If I get there and you are not there, I will be calling the police".

So, luckily, Brian came home as I was preparing to leave and, after I filled him in on the goings on of the day, he said he was coming with me.

We got to the "kids" house where he was, Brian went to the door, some short "ugly" kid (his words) came to the door, Brian said "I'm here to get Bryn", the kid said, "uhh, yeah (most likely ala Beavis & Butthead) he'll be right out". Brian comes back to the van and a few minutes later, I see Bryn coming out the door, being supported by two other kids, they walk him to the sidewalk and retreat back in the house. He limps/stumbles across the parking lot (we were in a townhouse subdivision), and I jump out of the van and yell WHAT THE HELL IS YOUR PROBLEM?? His reply (slurred) nothing. He gets in the van, can barely walk, his pupils are the size of quarters, he is whiter than white, speech slurred, I could see his heart beating through his shirt and he was shaking. I asked him what he was doing, to which he replied (again) "nothing". I said you better tell me what you were doing or I am going over the house, pounding on the door to find out, and then I am calling the police to come out to the house. He says, please don't, I was smoking marijuana, that's all. I guess he thinks we're stupid, because clearly that wasn't all he was doing.

We get to Rob & Calene's house, and tell them the rest of what happened (they knew the bare bones of the story) and as luck would have it, Calene knew the mother of one of the other kids that was there and she called her. She questions her son, who tells her that they were smoking pot and doing Triple C's (coricidan, cough and cold). That was when we decided he was going to the hospital.

Long story short.....actually, too late for that. Anyway, he swore by his story that he was smoking pot only, nothing else. At his triage, his heart was rate about 125, his blood pressure 170 over something. We got into a room around 9:45 - 10:00 and a NP student came in to do his assessment. He told her that he had only smoked pot, we told her about the triple c's, he said again he didn't do those, so we (Rob & I) told her that we would leave the room so they could talk, at which point Bryn told her that he did not smoke any pot but rather he and a "friend" shared a bottle of Robitussin. And, since in the state of VA (and possibly others, I don't know), he has to consent to a drug test before one can be administered, and even if he does consent to one, the parent's aren't allowed to know what is in it. Anyway, he didn't consent to one, I'm not sure why. My guess is he thought they would have to draw blood, but he will be consenting to one at his doctors office.

The doctor said he was too tachycardic (sp) to go home, that most likely an iv bag would help with that, so they hooked him up around 11:45pm. By the time we left about an hour and a half later, his hear rate was at 60 & his BP was 116 over something. Quite a difference.

He apologized on the way out and said thank you for bringing me here. I feel 1000x better than I did when we came.

Sitting beside my son who is stoned out of his mind in the emergency room isn't quite the scene that I had envisioned, but given the alternatives that were racing through my head, I'll take it.