An ambulance met us on the corner right off the highway. The paramedics gathered around the driver. "Squeeze my hand," a paramedic said. "He's weak in the left arm," he told another paramedic. "Do me a favor, can you smile for me?" The driver couldn't.It wasn’t alcohol or an overdose; it was a stroke. They loaded him into the ambulance with oxygen, to take him to the hospital. I had gotten his boss' number from his phone when it became clear he was sick, and we called him. The boss told us the driver’s name was Andre. And then, he told us what had really happened.As Illich pulled away from the curb in Rockaway, one of the girls our driver was supposed to pick up called the company to complain about his intoxication. The boss, knowing Andre didn’t drink or do drugs, and that he had been in the hospital the week before for high blood pressure, knew exactly what was happening. He frantically called the driver’s phone, over and over, as we worked our way through beach traffic. If he could get us to pull over and say where we were, he could send an ambulance.“Give the man who is driving the phone!” he said. Andre would only mumble, “I’m good,” and then drop the phone to his side without hanging up. This is the part that pains me the most. It’s like a nightmare — when you’re trying to convince someone to help, and they look at you impassively, no matter how much you yell and scream. Except this time, we were the nightmare — the clueless observers. At one point, I even reached over and pressed the red hang-up button for him.I was just trying to help. I didn’t know.I think I also thought, somewhere in the back of my mind, that if I took the phone, the boss would demand we stop the van and climb out because we weren’t covered under the insurance, or something. I felt entitled to our plan of action. Our driver, I thought, was drunk. We would get everyone home in one piece, plus maybe leave some room for the driver to talk his way out of trouble when he was coherent again. We were being responsible. Taking charge. Minimizing inconvenience for everyone.Is it a valid excuse to say that we are not the only ones to mistake a stroke victim for a drunk? A video of an Indian police officer having a stroke went viral when bystanders thought he was drunk. Even doctors and paramedics have been known to misdiagnose a stroke as alcohol poisoning, and police have jailed and tried to give DUI s to drivers having strokes.According to the CDC, 113,100 people died in 2014 from stroke, making it the fifth-leading cause of death in the U.S. It’s not as common as seeing someone stumbling out of a bar and falling over, especially when you are in your 20s and spend time on the Lower East Side, but it happens. And it might happen in front of you. Would you recognize it?Andre had a hemorrhagic stroke, which is when a blood vessel ruptures in the brain. It’s the more rare of the two kinds of strokes, but more deadly. If we had known the signs (a slack face, weakness in the arms, slurred speech, the fact that he went from sober to practically catatonic in 10 minutes), we might have saved him. Fast treatment is essential to saving the life of a stroke victim. Instead, he bled into his brain during those 40 minutes we blithely drove our merry van of tipsy beachgoers home. I still can’t wrap my head around this bleak fact: If it weren't for our ignorance, he might have lived.The boss called us the next morning to tell us that Andre was being taken off life support. We said we were sorry, over and over, but his boss said it wasn’t our fault, that he was grateful for what we did, and his widow didn’t blame us.Perhaps it is accurate to say that we were the last fork in a long road toward that tragic moment. Andre wasn't even 40, but Black men have a statistically high risk of stroke. Other risk factors include being overweight, physical inactivity (like driving a car all day for your job), high blood pressure, and high cholesterol, among other things. Andre may not have been a drinker or drug user, but he loved food, his boss said. He was also a stubborn man, and apparently, always had been. Maybe that’s why he wouldn’t give Illich the phone. Anyway, this “what if” game will not serve anyone. I don’t want to play it.I’m not proud of this story. But I wanted to tell it, because I think everyone should know. If someone gets suddenly inexplicably drunk around you, ask that person to squeeze your hands. Ask him or her to smile for you. If that person can’t do those things, get help.