Yesterday evening, I saw what a stroke looks like, and what an appropriate response looks like, for what it’s worth.

I was in a meeting, and the chairperson was getting his procedure binder ready. I was sitting near him, and noticed a cookie on the floor next to him. “Is that your cookie?” I asked.

He stared at it briefly, then gave me a blank look. “I guess not,” I said, and threw it out, figuring he was busy. He is one of those people who is polite, brisk, and a little roguish, with the rawhide look of a cowboy and an intelligent face, including a fine beak of a nose. He has gray hair but could be any age from fifty to 70, and he likes to date younger women who are lanky and detached. His expression right then wasn’t a whole lot different from his normal one, but still, it wasn’t like him not to answer me.

Then I noticed the time. It was three minutes after the meeting was supposed to start, and he was still staring in mild puzzlement at his papers.

Simultaneously, several of us realized what was happening.

I asked him a couple of questions, and he was able to answer, “No,” with some effort.

A friend called 911.

A member of the group with some emergency experience, meanwhile, came up and asked him to stick out his tongue. He showed intention and concentration, but couldn’t stick it out. She asked him to raise both his arms. He couldn’t raise the right one, and the left one wandered. She borrowed someone’s Apple Watch and took his pulse. The roomful promptly moved all the tables and chairs to the side so the EMTs could get through the crowded room. Someone with insufficient information about first aid asked about defibrillators (not indicated for stroke), but on the whole, everyone was focused and helpful, and stayed out of the way, if they weren’t actively helping.

A friend who was attending on Zoom texted me to tell me he knew someone who knew the chairperson’s family, and would get in touch. That was a relief because we couldn’t get into the victim’s phone.

The EMTs arrived, wheeled him in his desk chair to the front hallway, and started checking him, sending everyone else back into the meeting room.

The person who was running the Zoom hosting was having a bad week already, and couldn’t go on, so I took over Zoom. I took a sense of the room and we agreed to go on with the meeting. A friend volunteered to chair in the victim’s place. Another member of the group went out to go with the victim in the ambulance. My Zoom friend texted me the number of the person who knew the family, and I went outside, got the number of the guy going with along in the ambulance, and texted the number to him.

That whole narrative took only about twenty minutes, from start to finish.

At the end of the meeting, 45 minutes later, my Zoom friend texted me again: “He’s awake and talking!” and I announced that to everyone. Right afterwards, we finished the meeting at the normal time.

My friend who had subbed in for the chair gave me a ride home, and we talked about a thrift shop we want to visit one of these days. I did my stretches, read quietly, went to bed, and woke up absolutely, fiercely awake at about 3:00 am, and have been up since.

The hardest moment for me was when a young woman I didn’t know well, while the EMTs were working, said to me that she was praying for him. “He’s gonna be all right,” she said fervently.

“He’s gonna be what he’s gonna be,” I said, which wasn’t the right thing to say, but was what I was thinking.

A friend texted me this morning that their mantra for 2026 is going to be “slow down, there isn’t much time left.” They said they thought maybe they had heard it from me. I don’t think they did, but I’m going to steal it from now on.