A funny thing happened while waiting to do another blog … tonight. Okay, so maybe it wasn’t funny.
It was a quiet night, Thursdays usually are and I did some writing, and had just paused to make my lunch.
I fired up, ‘Call the Midwife’, which by the way is an excellent show, then went to the break room to make my soup and sandwich.
I came from the break room with my food and there sitting in front of the back house laundry door was a plastic bag. It looked like towels.
Great, swell, I thought. I put down my food, grabbed some gloves and lifted the bag. It was heavy and I assumed they were wet. I opened the bag and … STOP.
What?
There in the bag, wrapped in one big towel is a bunch of bloody towels. I am not talking speckled with blood, I’m talking soaked.
At first I am utterly disgusted, thinking, ‘who would freaking just do this, it's just gross’, then I started to think. It looked bad. What do I do? So, I took a picture
As you can see here ….
and sent it to Dante.
This was his reply.
Yes, you read that right. Admittedly, I accepted that response at first and then I looked again at the blood. And I called him.
“Jackie,” he said, “Why are you calling at three in the morning. I'm watching Netflix.”
“Dante, did you really look at the picture.”
“I did.”
“I don’t think that’s a woman’s monthly,” I said.
“Jackie, it is. I see it all the time.”
“That much blood?”
“Women bleed a lot.”
“Not that much,” I argued.
“I’m telling you. I know women.”
“How?” I asked. “How? You’re not married and you don’t have a sister.”
“I have five kids.”
“Which you didn’t make.”
“That’s not right.”
“Look,” I told him. “Maybe I should call the police.”
“You can’t be calling the police over menstrual blood.”
Fine, I stopped arguing. Maybe he had a point. I put on gloves, tied the bag, tossed it in the dumpster and reheated my lunch.
Middle of Call the Midwife, afterbirth flying on the screen, it hits me. It really is a lot of blood and following my instinct, I called the police. I mean what if there was a murder, or a baby born.
While waiting on the police, I squeezed the bag to feel for limbs.
Anyhow, the police show up, one officer, not the hot cop. And he said, “You called about a bag of bloody towels. Aren’t you used to that?”
“What? Bloody towels?”
“Yes, I mean, it’s a hotel.”
“No, not like this.”
“Why don’t you get the towels.”
So I did. I told him I had to get it from the dumpster
He put on gloves, opened the bag and looked. “Holy shit, that’s a lot of blood.”
“Thank you!”
“And you just threw it in the trash. All this blood. You didn’t think someone could be hurt or dead.?”
Admittedly, I got scared a little. Did I toss out valuable evidence? So I covered. “Absolutely, that’s why I called you right away. The second I found it … in the dumpster. I couldn’t believe an employee would just see that and throw it out.”
“How do you know it was an employee?”
“Because when I relived Dante he said, that a woman had her monthly all over towels and he threw them out.”
“Dante threw this out?”
I nodded. “And I found it suspicious, I mean who in their right mind looks at this and says it’s a woman's monthly. He may know more."
“I will come back to talk to him.”
He left and suffice to say, I was happy to get back to my lunch and Call the Midwife.
EDIT TO THIS STORY: OMG! Just as I was posting this from home, I got a phone call from the police. They found a hand in the bag!! I guess I missed it when I was feeling it. Anyhow, now they REALLY want to talk to Dante