Here in the US, 1 out of every 3 women have experienced some form of physical violence by an intimate partner. My guest in this episode is Alyssa. She WAS that 1 out of 3.
Today’s episode needs a content warning, for discussion of suicide.
This is a Flashback episode. Alyssa told this story on the podcast way back in episode 16, more than 7 years ago. Unfortunately, as sometimes happens, I was not able to get in touch with her recently for an update.
Alyssa lives in Tennessee and she’s really into music. She’s a musician, a songwriter, and an audio engineer. Her boyfriend, Jared, was abusive to her – emotionally and physically – and police were actively planning to arrest him. But before that could happen, Jared decided he would take his own life. And he wanted to do it in a way that would be disturbing and traumatic for anyone nearby.
Full show notes and pictures for this episode are here:
https://WhatWasThatLike.com/247
Graphics for this episode by Bob Bretz. Transcription was done by James Lai.
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Episode transcript (download transcript PDF):
If you’re in the Austin, Texas area – let’s meet up. I’ll be in Austin the second week of March – and this is 2026, for you listeners of the future – we’ll have another in-person Listener Meetup on March 11. This is where you can come and hang out with me and other podcast listeners, have a drink, ask a question, whatever. I’d love to get to know you! All of the details can be found in the What Was That Like Facebook group, at WhatWasThatLike.com/facebook.
And now, on with today’s episode, which needs a content warning for discussion of suicide.
Here in the US, 1 out of every 3 women have experienced some form of physical violence by an intimate partner. My guest in this episode is Alyssa. She WAS that 1 out of 3.
This is a Flashback episode. Alyssa told this story on the podcast way back in episode 16, more than 7 years ago. Unfortunately, as sometimes happens, I was not able to get in touch with her recently for an update.
Alyssa lives in Tennessee and she’s really into music. She’s a musician, a songwriter, and an audio engineer. Her boyfriend, Jared, was abusive to her – emotionally and physically – and police were actively planning to arrest him. But before that could happen, Jared decided he would take his own life. And he wanted to do it in a way that would be disturbing and traumatic for anyone nearby.
Scott
How did you and Jared meet?
Alyssa
Jared and I met in, probably, 2015, I think. I was playing in rock bands in Memphis – I’m a bass player in a band. He saw me perform, came up afterward, and said that he liked my band a lot. We became Facebook friends. I noticed that he worked at Arden recording studio, which is a very popular recording studio. I had been working at this little, kind of, home studio – I was a studio rat as well. So, we just really hit it off because we both had the same interest – not only just being musicians but, specifically, being audio engineers. After that, it was very obvious that we should become partners.
Scott
What did you especially like about him?
Alyssa
Jared was absolutely a genius. Even to this day, I would say that he is one of the smartest people I’ve ever met. A lot of it was really manipulative because he knew that he was smarter than you and he could use that against you. At the same time, you could show him a guitar that you bought from a pawn shop and asked him to say everything that he knew about it, and he would have a mile-long list of just these little facts and tidbits. It wasn’t just music that he was smart about – he had baseball statistics memorized and just anything. He was brilliant. He was very, very smart.
Scott
Did you think he was ‘The one for you’?
Alyssa
Oh, definitely. I totally did. I thought that I never wanted to have kids, but I wanted to have kids with this dude and marry him. Obviously, in the beginning, everybody kind of goes through that little exciting love phase where everything just seems too good to be true in the first couple of months. Just imagine that feeling times 1 million because I think he wanted to, kind of, just bomb me with so much love – sort of, just give me everything that I wanted and make everything as smooth as possible in the first couple of months. That way, I would be more shocked when I found out who he really was and it would be harder for me to escape. It seemed intentional how much he molded himself into being the perfect person for me.
Scott
He kind of overdid it, but you didn’t recognize it at that time that that’s what he was doing.
Alyssa
Yeah, exactly. I thought that I just found ‘The one’.
Scott
What was your first indication that something was not right?
Alyssa
From the beginning, he told me that he had bipolar disorder. So, I think I had already expected things to go sour at times. So even when things went wrong, I still had this excuse, like, “Oh, he’s bipolar. This isn’t him. This is his mental illness acting up.” So, it took a while for me to realize how drastically wrong I was. I think, probably, the first time that he got violent with me was when it really sink in.
Scott
Can you describe the first time he physically abused you?
Alyssa
The first time was, I guess, less severe than what one might expect. We were at our recording studio. I don’t remember the argument at all, but I remember him grabbing me by the wrist, dragging me into the bathroom, and saying, “This is it, I’m going to kill you! Now, you’re going to die!” Before this, I don’t remember him ever threatening my life. Before, he had said that he would kill himself. Also, he had accused me of certain things, but he had never said outright, “I’m going to kill you!” So, that was the first real violent act. He pinned me against the wall, scraped my hand, and I was bleeding from my hand. It was really easy for me to not blame him because– I don’t know. I would say, however, that was the first truly violent incident, even though it wasn’t exactly violent.
Scott
How badly did the abuse get?
Alyssa
I don’t know what to compare it to. I don’t know if I should compare it to anything. For about a year, I was just constantly under this fear that I was going to be killed by this guy – like, he made it so obvious that he was willing to kill either me or himself or both of us. I would say one of the most severe things that he did was choke me to the point where I started blacking out. He never, like, punched me, which I think a lot of people think of domestic abuse – they imagined, like, their boyfriends punching and slapping their partners. He hit me once but, as I said, it didn’t hurt very much and it didn’t really leave a mark – I was just, kind of, red for a minute. So, it’s really strange, like, talking about violence in a domestic abuse situation because what I was more afraid of was the words that he said – more so than any of the violence. He threatened me constantly, like, saying he would kill me. He would hold knives, said that he would kill me, and got to the point where he would bring a gun to my house and say he would kill me. He never physically touched me in these scenarios, but those were always, by far, the most terrifying. If he was choking me, at least, I knew what he was doing. But if he had a knife in his hand, I had no idea what could happen.
Scott
I’m just thinking from the point of view of an average person who is listening to you describing your relationship with him, and the obvious question that comes up is, “Why did you stay with him?”
Alyssa
I remember that before I was in an abusive relationship, I was, kind of, scoffing at both men and women, thinking, “Why? How could somebody stay in a situation that’s so awful? Do they not have any respect for themselves? Or do they not know that they can do better?” After being in an abusive relationship – just imagine your neighbor threatens you every single day with a gun in his hand and said that he’s gonna kill you, you’ve called the cops multiple times but the cops don’t really do anything about it, you’ve told your friends and they don’t really believe you because they think that the neighbors are really nice people – when you believe that someone will kill you for making a wrong move, you don’t make wrong moves. So, you stayed because there’s a better chance of you staying alive if you do. I was looking at some sheets that I got from the Family Safety Center after trying to get him arrested at one point, and it has this checklist of things that you’re supposed to do. One of them is, like, “If your partner is around, don’t go into a kitchen or a bathroom where there are hard surfaces where they can push you against and hurt you.” I don’t think people realize how intricate abusers are and how they’re so dangerous that you can’t even be in a bathroom with them. So, when you ask, “Why don’t you leave?” Well, Jared constantly took my phone and went through all my texts. So, I couldn’t tell anybody that I wanted to leave. He would read my emails. If I changed my password, he would threaten me with a knife and say, “Tell me what your password is or I’m going to kill you.” You don’t leave because you can’t leave.
Scott
You think it might be safer to stay than it is to leave?
Alyssa
For a lot of women and men, yes – it’s definitely safer.
Scott
Tell us about the night at the bar. You worked at a bar at that time and that was when this whole event happened. Can you just take us through what happened there?
Alyssa
The week prior, Jared had been showing up to my house with weapons. I had to contact the police multiple times. I went to get a restraining order against him and it was being processed that week. At one point, I contacted the police when he showed up at my house with a gun. They came and I gave them his wrong birth date – I said he was born on February 22, 1986, but his actual birthday was on, like, 1984. So, they looked him up and they’re like, “This guy’s not on probation.” I was like, “Yes, he is! This is very serious! Please take me seriously!” So, nothing happened because of that because I gave them the wrong information. A couple of days went by where the police hadn’t contacted me or anything, so I went to the Family Safety Center. They noticed that I’ve given them the wrong date and they changed it to his actual birthday. Then, his probation stuff popped up. They were, like, “Oh, we this guy is serious. We need to find and get him.” So, after they had made that correction, I assumed that the police would go right to his house and arrest him.
I took off from work that entire week because I was in hiding. I was staying at my best friend’s house because Jared didn’t know where this was. I got the arrest warrant and restraining order going through its processing, so I assumed that it was safe for me to go to work, so I did because I’m broke and I needed money. I’m an audio engineer and I ran sound at this bar. For several hours, I didn’t hear anything. I was, of course, nervous. I did let the bar owner and the workers know what was going on. In fact, Jared had shown up at Murphy’s that week, so they knew that he was in the process of stalking me actively. A couple of bands played and then this next band came on. I was supposed to be recording them because, as I said, I’ve got a studio, so I was going to mix their live recording. So, I was setting up my microphones and audio interface, and I’ve got them all sitting at the edge of the stage waiting for the band to set up. Then, I walked back to my console and I looked at my phone. Jared sent me a message that said, “I didn’t threaten anybody. I can’t go to jail. I’m gonna kill myself.” So, I guess he had found out that there was a warrant for his arrest at that point.
At that point, I called his roommate to ask, “Hey, where’s Jared?” And it’s a little bit of a blur. I wasn’t on the phone with his roommate when I saw Jared walk in – it must have been moments after I’ve gotten off the phone. Jared came in shirtless and covered in this, kind of, shiny liquid. He had told me multiple times that he was going to set himself on fire, and that’s how he would kill himself. The reason that he did this is because when I was a kid, my father set a pile of his clothes and a bunch of his other possessions on fire in our house, in front of my mother, while saying, “Look what you’re doing to me! You’re destroying me!” because they were getting divorced. So, I woke up to that, witnessed that as a kid, and it just kind of scarred me, I guess. Then, when I was 21, the apartment that I was living in burnt down. So, that was another, kind of, fire trigger. So, Jared knew that, out of everything on the planet, fire kind of makes me nervous because of my experiences with it. So, I think that he thought, “Oh, this would be a great way to get back at her!” So, he showed up to the bar, walked in shirtless, covered in gasoline, grabbed my arm, rubbed it down his chest, and said, “I’m gonna do it. I love you.” Then, he kissed me on the lips and walked out. I started following him. Some of the people at the bar, obviously, knew that he was a threat and he was abusive, so they came out with me.
Alyssa
My friend, Paul, went as far as running across the street and trying to kick the matches or lighter or whatever out of Jared’s hands. There were people coming out, and I don’t think anybody, other than me, had any idea what was about to happen.
Scott
And he had already started the Facebook Live broadcast at this point?
Alyssa
Yeah. If you watch that video, it looks like he was adjusting his camera and sitting it down, then he got up, came into the bar, had his little last words with me, and came back – that’s the point where we had all gone outside. So, you can even see in the video, like, this moment of him going in, talking to me, and then coming back out. At that point, he was across the street – I stayed across the street from him – I didn’t want to approach him or anything. He set himself on fire at that point. Since Paul was so close to him, I think, Paul got, maybe, like, third-degree burns on his legs because of it. Jared started to run across the street. My friends who were outside, obviously, started screaming and running. For some reason – I think when the brain goes into shock, you don’t really have any clue what you’re doing – they all tried to run back into Murphy’s instead of just scattering. So, I felt this need to hold the door open for them. But then, Jared ran across the street, so I tried to close the door and lock it so that Jared would sit right on the other side of it and the only thing separating us is this piece of glass. He was so intense that I lasted, maybe, like 3 seconds tops – even though it felt like five minutes – trying to lock and hold the door so that he couldn’t come inside. I was afraid that not only was he going to try to hurt and grab me, but that the bar would burn down or somebody else would get hurt. So it didn’t work, so I think I have this memory of looking back and telling everybody to run. Then, I saw the bartender, Steve, coming out with a fire extinguisher and I just said, “Thank you, Steve. I’m sorry.” And it was just awful. I mean, people were screaming for a solid 5-10 minutes, which doesn’t sound very intense, but when you’re in that situation where somebody is so upset that they were just screaming and inconsolable, it’s frightening. There were people vomiting. There were a lot of people throwing up just from the sight of Jared being on fire – watching someone burning to death.
Scott
Well, what they were seeing was probably the most traumatic thing that they had ever seen or will ever see. At that point, since he was already broadcasting it on Facebook – some people saw it on Facebook Live, including your sister Sarah – several people called 911 at that point.
Alyssa
Yeah.
(911 Call with Woman A)
911 Operator
Memphis police department. Can I help you?
Woman A
Hi, ma’am. I actually live in Rochester, Minnesota, but I used to live in Memphis. I just saw a Facebook friend go on Facebook Live and light himself on fire. I don’t know where he is, but I have his name.
911 Operator
Okay. Did he say where he was or anything like that, ma’am?
Woman A
He didn’t give a geographic location, but he is in Memphis.
911 Operator
Okay. I think we are working on something similar to that. What is his name?
Woman A
Jared McLemore.
911 Operator
All right. I will let the officers know that but we do have it.
Woman A
Okay, thank you, ma’am. I just want to make sure. I was appalled when I saw him. I’m so sorry.
911 Operator
That’s okay. Thank you for calling, ma’am.
(911 Call with Alyssa’s Sister)
911 Operator
This is 911 emergency. Do you need the police, fire, or ambulance?
Alyssa’s Sister
I actually didn’t know what else to do, so I called 911. I do not need anybody at my location. My sister’s abusive ex-boyfriend – his name is Jared McLemore – is somewhere in Memphis. I do not know where but he is live on Facebook. He just poured gasoline on himself and set himself on fire. So, in all good conscience, I needed to report that and I didn’t know what else to do. Should I call a non-emergency police number?
911 Operator
No. We have officers en route. You said that this is your sister’s ex-boyfriend?
Woman B
Yes, she is her abuser. She has filed police reports. His name is Jared McLemore.
911 Operator
How old is Mr. McLemore?
Alyssa’s Sister
He’s in his 30s – I’m not sure.
911 Operator
And he’s a male, white?
Alyssa’s Sister
Male, early 30s.
911 Operator
Okay. He did it on Facebook Live?
Alyssa’s Sister
Yes, ma’am. I have the notification on my phone. My partner tracked down the video. My mother called me to tell me this happened and she was just on Facebook and saw it. So, I got off the phone and called 911 because I wasn’t sure what else to do, but this is obviously an emergency.
911 Operator
Yes, ma’am. Well, we do have information about that and dispatch to the officers, okay?
Alyssa’s Sister
Okay, thank you. There’s a warrant out for his arrest for domestic violence and assault against Alyssa Moore.
911 Operator
Okay, thank you so much.
Scott
Did you communicate with him at all when you were standing there face-to-face on the other side of the door?
Alyssa
No, I didn’t – I don’t think I’ve been asked that before. No, I distinctly remember looking into his eyes and face and just having this moment of finally realizing, “Okay, this relationship is exactly as bad as I thought it was.” This was because he was so good at convincing me that I was the abuser in the relationship so that he wouldn’t have to have any responsibility. At that moment of seeing him with his face on fire, on the other side of the door on fire, trying to get into the building, I saw his phone on the ground, so I knew he was live-streaming it on Facebook – actually, it wasn’t even that. When he came into Murphy’s – I mentioned that I was on the phone with his roommate and putting my phone down – I had my phone in my hand when I saw ‘Jared McLemore is live’ on Facebook notification. He had threatened in the past that he was going to kill himself on Facebook so that the whole world could see what I had done to him. So, I had already made all these connections. But yeah, seeing him on fire and screaming – just knowing that he would try and blame me for it, or that he would say it was my fault – just, kind of, sank in that, “Oh, this is way more severe than I ever gave credit for.”
Scott
Do you think he wanted to kill you that night as well?
Alyssa
I had so many people asking me that and I did, kind of, a bad job of flip-flopping back and forth because if he wanted to kill me, he could have done it much more easily. He had come to my house multiple times with guns – he could have shot me. He could have choked me to the point of death – the times that he tried to choke me. I’ve seen footage that hasn’t been shown to anybody from the Murphy’s cameras, where you can see him grabbing me. When I turned around and ran away from him, it looked like he was trying to grab onto me. So, my brain flip-flopped back and forth between, “Oh well, he was just trying to keep his balance from just falling and stumbling over because he was in so much pain.” The other part of me is, like, “No, he wanted to take you down. He was trying to grab your shirt. Look, he was specifically grasping for you.” I think that it’s probably fair to say that, yeah, he was trying to kill me as well or, maybe, he wasn’t sold on killing me – that he wouldn’t care if he did – I don’t know, I have no idea, honestly.
Scott
So he died the next morning, right?
Alyssa
I was told that he had third-degree burns on 80% of his body – I remember I was told that by a paramedic that night. So, when I got home that night, I looked up the survival chances of that, because I had an aunt who was in a car accident and she caught on fire along with her car, but she survived, she’s still alive today, and she’s fine and healthy. So, that night, as I was going home, I assumed that he was going to live because he was alive and talking when they dragged him out of Murphy’s – I could hear him howling in pain from outside as the ambulances were showing up, so I knew he was alive. Then, when I went home and looked up the survival rate, it was something, like, 10% for the injuries that he had received. I got a call from his mom at, maybe, 7 or 8 AM. I didn’t answer it because I was terrified too. I saw that Jackson, Tennessee area code, and I just let it go to voicemail, and it was very short and succinct, “Jared died this morning. I thought you’d like to know. Goodbye.”
Scott
Did you grieve his death?
Alyssa
Yeah, I definitely did. It’s been a while since I had any real grieving moments, but I think that I might continue to. I mean, it’s hard to explain. I was in love with the idea of this person, so I think I grieved more for the person who I thought he was, but not him. Or I grieved just for the fact that this happened at all. This person was incredibly intelligent. As I said, he was the most incredible guitar player I’ve ever heard and he had some other good qualities. It sucks that he was 33 when he died because of an awful decision. It was a very preventable death – grief is a weird word for it, but I don’t know. He was my best friend for a long time. As much as I don’t defend him or dislike him and recognize his evil nature– I mean, humans grieve loss, I guess. I don’t know.
Scott
Can you talk a little bit about what is your sense of freedom like now?
Alyssa
It’s baffling. It’s very strange because, I think, when it comes to me being in an abusive relationship, a lot of that had to do with growing up in a very similar environment. So, in my whole life, I’ve never known what it meant to be treated correctly by a person. For the most part, I was just recycling the same habits and the same scenarios from my childhood into my adult life. Then, seeing just how bad it got was this huge wake-up call for me. Essentially, I realized that I had to relearn everything that I’ve ever learned about love, relationships, how to treat someone, and how to be treated. Knowing that ‘It doesn’t have to be like that’ is the most exhilarating thing on the planet. I do a lot more now – like, Jared used to hate when I would record my own solo songs because he would be jealous of the attention that I would get, or he would hate if I put a selfie on Facebook because I was just being a slut – or whatever derogatory term he wanted to label me with. Now, I don’t have those fears. The only fear that I have is just only myself. Once I recognize that “Hey, this isn’t my own voice. This is Jared’s voice, or my dad’s voice, or my mom’s voice,” and your guts telling you to do this one thing but your heart’s telling you the other– just learning how to navigate around trusting myself has been the most liberating thing ever – it’s amazing.
Scott
Mmhmm. It’s kind of a long process, though, huh?
Alyssa
Oh, yeah, definitely. I don’t know if it’s rude or crude to joke about it, but Jared doing what he did really helped to speed the process up a little bit. I was able to take that event and realize just how insane and awful it was – my brain was, like, “Okay, this isn’t happening again. You’re not getting into this situation again! You’re changing! You’re learning the severity of what I went through!” That made it really easy for me to want to change, to be free, to not ever get in that situation again, and to learn the red flags, the signs, the boundaries, and how to stick up for myself.
Scott
That’s part of what I wanted to ask you about too – how does someone actually identify excessive love versus actual abuse? What kind of signs would you look for?
Alyssa
I think, of course, it varies from person to person. I think some of the most obvious ones that I hear from, especially, other women that I’ve talked to who have been abused is this lack of responsibility. If you have a problem and you bring that up but your partner tries to say that it’s your fault and things are like that, that’s a huge sign. If somebody approaches you with a problem, your mindset should be to work things out together, not to deflect responsibility and to blame the other person. Of course, everybody’s just human and that’s a very human thing to do. But when it becomes a habitual pattern of never taking responsibility for anything, then you’re dealing with somebody who is not interested in making things work – they’re just interested in this idea of being perfect.
Scott
It seems, like, the elements of control and manipulation are big factors here.
Alyssa
Oh, definitely. The thing about manipulation, in particular, is that manipulation is very hard to detect, or else it wouldn’t be called that – it would be called something else and have another definition. So people who are manipulated often don’t even realize that they’re being manipulated because it’s so sneaky and so intentionally hidden. So, I’m always reluctant to tell people, like, “Look out for manipulative behavior” because if it wasn’t hard to detect, then it wouldn’t be as bad as it is – I’m not sure if I’m getting that point across.
Scott
I understand.
Alyssa
Yeah, manipulation is a huge one, for sure, but it’s often the hardest to detect.
Scott
Especially if you’re right in that situation. Maybe, an outsider looking in might be able to figure it out.
Alyssa
Exactly. I’m trying to think of, maybe, an example with Jared – I don’t know. I would say that he was in a band – the band that I mentioned at the beginning of the story – and our drummer was not able to practice as much as me and the guitarist were, so Jared came along and was, like, “Oh well, you should just get rid of your drummer. I’ll play drums for y’all.” At that time, it sounded like a great idea, but it was actually very manipulative of him to try and break up my band that was fine, to begin with, and to join it so that he could be more involved in my life. So, that’s another version of manipulation where it seems like he’s actually doing something nice but, in the long run, it was actually all for his own benefit.
Scott
If someone’s listening to this and they are in an abusive relationship, what would your advice to them be?
Alyssa
So many people have these misconceptions about domestic abuse, which makes them not very great to seek advice from. I think it’s incredibly important to contact the National Domestic Violence/Abuse Network. Contact people with credentials or long-term service workers. Unfortunately, a lot of people don’t know how to handle domestic violence. It’s such a serious and severe situation that you really do need somebody who has experience. I remember a lot of times when contacting my friends and trying to explain my situation, they would say, “Oh well, if he’s not hurting you, then he probably just needs his medications to be changed or something.” So, people can give really bad advice that can keep you in danger, so just be mindful of that. If your gut is telling you that you need to leave the relationship and somebody tells you, “No, I think you’re wrong,” don’t listen to them.
Scott
Listen to your gut instead.
Alyssa
Yeah, listen to your gut. As I said, I contacted the National Domestic Violence Center and they were incredibly helpful because, as I mentioned, Jared wasn’t very physically violent with me as much as he was emotionally abusive, and they did a very good job of convincing me that that was even more detrimental to me. Whereas my friends saw it as, “Oh well, if he’s not violent, then he’s fine.”
Scott
But they’re not the experts.
Alyssa
Exactly. Yeah. So that’s my odd piece of advice. But truly, if you have the privilege to contact an expert in privacy, secretly, that would be my advice before going to a friend – unless you know, for a fact, that your friend is aware of how severe domestic violence is.
Scott
Well, it sounds like you’re doing much better.
Alyssa
Definitely. Oh man, I couldn’t be happier. It’s strange to say that after how awful that event was, but it’s so nice to not live in fear.
Scott
Yeah, that’s good. I’m glad to hear that. Alyssa, thanks so much for sharing your story. I’m glad it turned out well and that you’re doing well.
Alyssa
Thank you.
Scott
I’d really love to have a new update chat with these guests from the past, but when so much time goes by, contact information sometimes changes. I do it when I can though. I hope Alyssa is doing okay.
Our Facebook question this past Tuesday was this: What’s a sentence that completely changed your life? This is a question that can lead to a big variety of answers. How would YOU answer that question? Come on over and tell us what happened – WhatWasThatLike.com/facebook
If you liked this episode, you might want to hear episode 99, titled “Bill got a dreaded phone call”. My friend Bill Mitchell told the story of losing his daughter, Kristin, as a result of domestic violence. And there is a surprise in that story that you would never see coming.
And don’t forget, if you’re in or near Austin, Texas – I want to meet you! Get the details in the Facebook group.
Graphics for this episode were created by Bob Bretz. Full episode transcription was created by James Lai.
And you know what time it is now – time to hear this week’s Listener Story. Did you know, you could hear your own voice right here on the podcast? Just record a story of something interesting that happened to you. Make it short, like 5-10 minutes. And email it to Scott@WhatWasThatLike.com.
This story deals with the question – what do you do when you see a stranger in public having a medical crisis?
Stay safe, and I’ll see you next week.
(Listener story)
About 13 years ago, a family friend – now a former friend – and I took my young cousin to a museum to see an IMAX movie. Outside the museum entrance, there was a woman lying unconscious on the ground clearly having some sort of medical emergency. She was surrounded by about half a dozen people who didn’t appear to be doing anything, so my gut was to go over and try to help, but I didn’t have the confidence to actually directly approach the woman. So, I called 911 and the operator started asking me questions that I wasn’t able to answer. “Is she breathing? How’s her pulse?” Et cetera.
While this is going on, the friend starts pestering me. She’s telling me to hang up the phone, stop what I’m doing. “We’re gonna be late for the IMAX movie. Hurry up, let’s go.” She seemed to be completely, completely unaffected by the fact that there was a woman who was potentially dying right before our eyes. After a few moments, I saw that other people were also on the phone with 911, so I relented. I hung up the phone and I left the scene with the friend, and I never found out what happened to that woman.
I beat myself up for a long time after that for caving to this friend’s pressure. I wish I had been brave and ignored her and done what I could to help the woman. After that I took a CPR course and I’ve since gone on to become a physician assistant. I still get scared during emergencies but at least I’m well trained on how to handle them. I recommend that everyone take a CPR course because you never know when you’re going to be in a situation like that. You may or may not be able to save a life, but at least you can feel good knowing that you did everything you could.