I completely understand, and I don’t think that makes you a bad person in any way...in today’s world, that is just being smart.
Being drunk in public places far from home, and far from your own country is something I have done, and while I am not proud of it, I think learned from those experiences, and have been both on the drunk side needing help, and the sober side, helping a stranger.
The last time for me was when I was in the USN back in the Seventies, and I was alone, miles from Fleet Landing, just doing my own thing in Taranto, Italy.
I just wanted to get as far away from the ship as possible, and was walking by a road in a little town I had lunch in, and saw a group of people gathered uncertainly around an unconscious man lying in the gutter, and thought I might offer to help, administer first aid, whatever. When I got a look, it was immediately apparent he was an American sailor, obviously intoxicated and passed out. (I have always maintained, I can spot an American military person in a foreign country a mile away...it isn’t just the haircut...it is the entirety, clothes, etc. They just look different...)
Well, there he was, his wallet laying on the ground next to him with some bills sticking out. American Dollars. My heart sank. I thought about just leaving him, but...I couldn’t. Someone picked up his wallet, and another person came over and gave me some more bills-I think they took them out of the wallet because they thought someone might steal them.
A kid offered to give me a ride back to Fleet Landing on his motorcycle, so I jumped on the back, and away we went.
When I got to Fleet Landing, I told the Shore Patrol, and they got a truck and I went back with them to show where he was, and they picked him up and threw him in the back.
Another time in Mallorca, six of us came across another guy, obviously a shirtless sailor, passed out on the beach lying on his back. He was badly sunburned, and we stopped and stood around him. Nobody wanted to do anything about it because we wanted to go to Texas Jacks and meet someone, and I said “Well, we can’t leave him here like this!”
We thought for a second, and then one of the guys walked over, turned him over on his stomach, and said “Let the other side cook...someone else will find him before he’s done! Let’s go, we have a cab waiting!”
So we left. Over the years, I have thought about that, and thought that sure, we SHOULD have done something, and maybe someone DID find him, but...OTOH, he might have burned so badly on that side that he wouldn’t have had a good side to sleep on. Sigh. We were bastards, but if we left him on his back, he was sure to blister.
Yes, but you had a connection with that person. US Navy, in-country is a very small circle - a kind of brotherhood. You could say he was not a “stranger.” You immediately knew where he belonged, and his situation. You naturally did the right thing.
On reflection, maybe this woman saw the connection she had with the man, and grasped his background, and his situation.
If you ever have a bad sunburn, mist vinegar on it.
Takes the sting right out of it.
Apply massive amounts of aloe