It’s a normal Friday as I go to my classes and pack my stuff to go home for the weekend. I place a call to my mom to tell her I’m on my way. As I’m driving, my friend calls and asks me if I want to spend the night at her house. I say “sure” since it’s been a few weeks since I’d last seen her.

After a few minutes with my mom and dad I let them know my plans for the night. As always they tell me to be safe and call them when I get there. I arrive at my friend’s house five minutes later and she’s crying. We decide to go for a drive. She tells me about a pain she has been having and how it’s getting worse. She tells me how, once again, her boyfriend is being a jerk to her and not really understanding specifically the pain she is having. I know exactly what she means but I don’t say anything about my problems. I stick to telling her that everything is going to be alright and that in the morning we will go and figure out what is wrong with her.

She calms down and stops crying so we go back to her place where we continue to talk about what has been happening in our lives and how things have always been so hard for us. Later, her boyfriend calls her and once again they get into a fight. She’s crying again about the same thing. I take her in my arms, comfort her once again and tell her everything is going to be alright– he’ll soon come to his senses.

About an hour later my friend looks at me and says firmly, “I have to see him now and talk to him about this in person.” Damn it’s like 10 p.m. and I still haven’t had time to write my column. “Take it with you,” she says. We get into the car and she drives the 15 minutes to her boyfriend’s house. I sit in the car while she talks to him.

I am able to finish my re-write of my column and drift off into a dream world all of my own. I hear voices coming behind me and see them both coming towards me. Her boyfriend climbs in and says “hi” to me really quick, then leaves. She hops in and we are on our way back to her house. I ask her what happened and what he said as she tells me everything is okay and they talked things through.The next day we drive over to Planned Parenthood. She is seven weeks pregnant! They do an ultra-sound, but don’t see anything. They think they pregnancy might be in her fallopian tubes and the sharp pains she was having might be a rupture of her tube.We did not believe what was happening– it just didn’t seem real.After almost six hours and numerous tests, we find out that she needs to have surgery immediately because she is bleeding internally. The doctor tells us that without the surgery she could die. We both start crying and wonder how this could happen.

I watch as the nurses prep her for surgery. She calls her parents to come and I make the call to her boyfriend to get his butt down here because she needed him. I stay with her until her parents arrive. I leave the room not able to handle everything that is going on. I walk outside where I sit down and completely break down, crying so hard that my eyes and head start to hurt. I start to feel sick and a little light headed. Her mom comes out to find me and talks to me a little trying to comfort me and let me know I did the right thing.

The next day I go to visit her in the hospital. She looks pale and very tired as she lays there on her bed. She didn’t even know I was there to see her. When she is finally able to talk on the phone, she calls me and tells me how glad she was that I was there with her the whole day. I ask if she is alright. I tell her not to worry about it that there was no way I was going to leave her alone to go though all that by her self.

I think to myself that sometimes college doesn’t allow you to be the kid you were when you started. Sometimes, I have to be the parent I left behind and the parent I will be someday- all before the end of my first semester at Sacramento State.