The last few times I’ve been in an emergency situation, I’ve been the emergency. I’ve talked about most of them fairly extensively on Lemmy, but the last time I was close to being in one where I wasn’t the focus is as follows:

I have a kid, then I think four, maybe early five. At the time this happened I was either working from my home office or studying, something that required most of my attention and, preferably, no distractions. The kid was with their mother, so I knew they were being watched. I heard the kid call out once or twice, perhaps a bit plaintively on reflection, but didn’t respond because I was confident they were being supervised.

The third time, I thought it odd that their supervisor hadn’t responded and stepped out to say “what do you need?” They said “I need help.” They always like to ask for help even when they don’t need it, they just want us to do the work, and I was up a flight of stairs with - at the time - mobility issues, so I didn’t respond with urgency. I did come down to help, but slowly and complaining in my brain the whole time.

The kid has always liked to climb but also had concerns about getting down once they got up. It turns out that, in this case, the mother had stepped away to use the restroom and the kid had climbed onto a table in the kitchen. They then pulled a random stepladder to the table and tried to climb down it backwards, but managed to get their neck stuck under the handle and didn’t have the upper body strength to get themself out of the situation.

They’re fine now, but I hate that memory.