Girl code

What am I even doing here? I thought, backed into the dark alcove by the swarm of men, one of them armed. I really, really shouldn’t be here.

The foyer was huge but the house old and quirky with its oddly placed nooks. The one I occupied let me keep an eye on my fallen elderly neighbor without getting in EMS’s way.

At the moment, I couldn’t see her over the tops of the EMTs’ heads. The young one with the ponytail was saying he could give her a dose of something to keep her calm, and then they could transport.

“Let me know,” the responding officer said, and I begged my brain and body to please, please unfreeze.

I knew it was 2025, that I was standing in the foyer, that the person on the floor was my neighbor, not Mike lying unresponsive on the bottom of the stairs. My neighbor was deaf but otherwise very much present.

“Don’t fucking touch me,” she told the EMTs.

“We might have to dose her.”

I chewed on the inside of my cheek, my anxiety growing.

“I want my niece!” my neighbor wailed.

“Let me see how far away your niece is,” our other neighbor Carrie said, already redialing.

“If there’s no family or power of attorney,” the younger EMT was saying again, “and she can’t respond to questions, we have to take her.”

It was 2025, and not Mike, but something about the situation was eerily familiar. It wasn’t til later that I figured it out. When they were talking about taking her in even though she’d been loud and clear that she wanted to wait for her family, my brain cut to all the times I’ve been in the ER, fighting to advocate for myself or Mike to providers who don’t (for whatever reason) listen. Most recently, he’d fallen again due to an issue with his legs from the initial TBI in December 2023. We went to the ER by ambulance, and many hours later, when I went home to get some rest, staff left him in a forgotten corner, with a fall risk bracelet, full bladder, and no one to help him to the bathroom, go over his test results, or even just check on him. When I came back the next morning, their social worker tried telling me I needed to put him in 24-hour care, and that he’d forget all about me or that he was even there.

Mike was a little sleep deprived, dealing with a migraine after another fall, and (understandably) angry that he was being ignored. Despite the shitty situation, he was fully aware and alert. Not someone you’d put in long-term care.

Lightning doesn’t strike twice—usually—but I still wasn’t gonna let EMTs dope up my neighbor and take her to the ER. Best case scenario, she’d sit for a few hours, scared and stubborn, where they might not have the patience to let her self-advocate.

97 years old now, she was still working 10 years ago when Mike and I first moved in. I remember her and Mary giving me mums they’d gotten from work, just because I’d commented the ones on their porch were so pretty. Even then, I was impressed they were both still working at the factory. Impressed, and sad, because I know how hard it is to get by.

“Family is on the way,” I reminded the eager EMT.

“We’ll take our time, then,” the older EMT said, gently rubbing my neighbor’s back. They’d finally convinced her to let them help her up from the floor and onto her bed. She refused to admit whether she was hurt, stubbornly resisting.

Not that I could blame her.

Even though she’s 97, and deaf, and can’t really see, she’s very much still with it. She will cuss out anyone and everyone, keeps her apartment immaculate, and chats with the mailman every morning. Every time I’ve had to call EMTs for Mike this past year, she’s poked her head out and checked in, worried about us.

This is her home. It was also her home with Mary, who passed away a few years ago. That night, I heard her crying for Mary and went right down to check on them. Unfortunately, there wasn’t anything we could do, other than sit with her until EMTs and then family came.

I felt even more useless yesterday. Because of my lupus and endometriosis, I tend to hibernate for long periods of time. One of my neighbors once jokingly commented, “I didn’t know you drive.” At the tattoo shop Mike apprenticed at, the artists busted Mike’s balls that he didn’t really have a wife. “I do exist,” I told them with a laugh the first time I was able to visit.

My neighbor didn’t seem to recognize me at all, but thankfully she’d become familiar with our other first floor neighbor, Carrie.

“We’ll take it nice and slow, as long as it takes to keep her safe and not scared,” the older EMT said. The others acquiesced, and I finally started to come back into my own body.

“Thank you, guys,” I said, hoping I inflected my words with the deep gratitude I felt. I knew I was potentially overstepping my role as neighbor seen and not heard, but I’ve seen firsthand how people fall through the cracks in the system. Some people even get shoved through the cracks. Carrie and I were doing our best putting the pieces together for the EMTs, but we aren’t family and we don’t really know her. I don’t know her D.O.B. or her medications, for example. I don’t know who has P.O.A. or what her rights as an elderly woman are.

I do know that if I were her, I’d want my sovereignty and dignity preserved. I definitely wouldn’t want to be drugged up, carted into an ambulance, and taken to the hospital without my consent.

In certain circumstances, they have to. If my neighbor truly had no one, she’d be stuck on the floor, unable to care for herself. If I hadn’t waited to take my shower, and heard her fall and calling out, and Carrie hadn’t happened to stop home quick for her dog, she could’ve been on the floor for days. So I got why the EMTs were considering that option.

But it wasn’t necessary.

Suddenly I understood exactly why I was there.

Even in my trauma brain state, I was able to advocate for her. She made it clear she wanted to wait for her family, and they weren’t really listening—they were asking me if she had dementia. Carrie and I looked at each other and laughed; she’d just cussed out our landlord the other day, but not because of dementia!

If I’d just called 911 from upstairs and continued about my day rather than going down, if Carrie hadn’t stopped home to let out her dog, the EMTs more than likely would’ve taken her under a PEER/PREE and she would’ve sat in a forgotten corner of the ER for who knows how long before family was contacted.

Explanation of a PEER/PREE in Connecticut
(Police Emergency Examination Request)
#KnowYourRights

I kept going into freeze state with flashbacks, and evidently it was noticeable because that same empathetic EMT asked if I was okay. But I pushed through it, reminding myself that as awkward as I felt, I was there for a reason. My job, I understood, was to witness, and support whatever my neighbor wanted.

I’d enacted girl code.

It’s a thing we do, often without words exchanged. We have to, because the system isn’t structured for us. It doesn’t protect us. Often, it exploits us.

And now, more than ever, we need girl code.

So I’m enacting it, worldwide, right here, right now.

Often, we feel like, “What can I do? I’m just… well… me.”

This is what we do. We enact girl code, and we adhere to it no matter what happens. No matter how small a difference it seems. Because actually, girl code is everything.

The system pits us against each other, but girl code applies to all. I’ve seen girl code executed by and for complete strangers. Girl code defies the system. It’s the most basic resistance. We look out for each other just because.

Girl code shall be enacted from here on, for all girls and women, regardless of difference in color, race, ethnicity, ability, age, status, station, title, or identity (including transgender women and nonbinary people; girl code does not differentiate “wombyn”).

We are one.

We are legion.

This is it, ladies.

It’s go time.

Photo by Library of Congress on Unsplash