Ooo, I was a hotel employee for a long time. Here are a few (I'll post additional ones in replies). When I was an 18 year old bellboy at a nice hotel in Boston circa 2001, I had a woman check in one evening who only had one bag, but still asked if I could carry it. I made idle chit chat - where are you from? Etc - and she reciprocated.
She was probably late 20's-early 30's, white, wearing a professional-ish skirt and jacket. It was pleasant, and only stuck out at all to me because it wasn't common business travelers wanted help with one small bag.
I worked the AM the next morning and had a list of rooms that hadn't checked out; hers was on it. 90% of the time it was just that they left without checking out and was pretty normal. Her room was on it and that's what I expected. I got to her room, knocked; nothing. Knocked again, "bellman," nothing. Knock once more: "bellman, I'm coming in."
I opened the door. "Hi, Ms. _____, are you in?" I opened the door maybe a door or so, and it hit something. I pushed it a bit more, and whatever it was moved.
"Ms. _______, is everything alright?" I stuck my head in; she was lying naked on the floor, face down, in front of the door.
I pulled back. "I'm so sorry, Ms. ______, I didn't know you were-" the image caught up with my mind. She was laying there, on the floor, naked, unresponsive.
I pushed the door open a bit and stepped it. She was laying in a pool of blood, which was drying, and was, unsurprisingly, pale. I reached down to to her wrist to feel for a pulse; there was a huge gash down her arm. The other arm had one, too, which she'd tried to tie off with a bedsheed, which trailed behind her and was mostly saturated with blood, so I felt for a pulse in her neck. She was cold, and of course, there was none.
What was I supposed to do? I asked myself. I radioed down to the desk. "Bellman to front desk."
"Front desk, copy."
"Hey, this is ______. Please call 911 and have them come up to room 623 immediately."
"________, what's going on?"
"The guest appears to be dead, over."
🥴😬
The minute and a half or so between then and when security and the GM got up there were such a strange, surreal place in time. I was kneeling next to this woman who I'd spoken to a few hours earlier. She was laying next to me, dead; not even just dead, but exposed, bloodied. I sighed, reached down, and gently smoothed her hair back down from where I'd pushed it aside to take her pulse. I wasn't even freaked out that she was dead, so much as I was just sad.
The paramedics and cops got there, and stared taking pictures, asking me questions. They went over the tapes from the night before; she never left the room, and I was probably lucky that the tape caught her saying goodbye to me from the doorway and closing it herself.
The detective showed me, the GM, and the head of security that it looked like she had drawn a bath, laid down in it and cut herself - the water was bloody and there was a pocket knife in the water - and then had panicked and gotten out. He said this was fairly common, especially with women: the thought that they would simply bleed out gracefully and sink into the water, not only bleeding out but drowning, but that they would often panic when they realized they were bleeding out and try to get help.
The phone had been ripped out at the base, which he guessed she did in advance, to prevent herself from calling for help, and then she tried to tie a tourniquet with the sheet, which was too big, so she tried to make it to the door before she passed out from blood loss and died. He said all these other things were fairly typical for a suicide as well - the planning, the panicking, the last-moment attempt to get help. She had left a piece of paper with her name, SSN, and phone numbers out, but no note or explanation there.
My boss offered me the rest of the day off. I declined, because I needed the money, so they bought me lunch, and then just told me to go home and take a couple days off, that they'd still pay me, which was pretty cool of them. My gf at the time was freaked out and didn't want me to touch her because I'd touched a dead person. After a day or two, pretty much everything went back to normal, though for the rest of my time there, people made fun of me for "the guest appears to be dead, over."
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