The back door of our apartment is glass. I (Matt) think the landlord replaced this glass shortly before Dave and I moved in. However, either right before we moved in or sometime shortly after (without us knowing when), the glass had cracked again. There has been a crack that went from the handle to the top of the door for as long as we can remember. Well, today the door was open, but a strong wind slammed it closed and a large piece of glass fell out and broke. I did my best to sweep that up and then Dave suggested that we take out the rest of the glass so that it did not fall out and break. It was in maybe 4 pretty large pieces. Dave was holding one and I began to remove another and just touching it, it slipped. I had one hand underneath so it didn't fall straight down to the ground or down on me. However, it was falling sideways toward Dave at what probably seemed to him like a very fast rate. I moved my left hand and stopped it from potentially doing much damage to Dave (the most dramatic way this has been stated is that I 'saved his life'), but got a pretty deep cut on the back side of my hand that is maybe a couple inches long and pretty deep. I dripped some blood on the floor and then moved to the sink to clean up a bit and saw that it was pretty deep. I told Dave that I would probably have to get stitches. We called the girls and Christine came over in the car. My boss said he would meet us at the clinic. He went to get paper work started so there would be no delay in care. We wrapped the wound in a clean sponge and applied pressure, which was the only thing that stopped the bleeding.
The car was necessary because Dave and I both have motos, so it would not be convenient for him to try to take me on his. Plus a downpour had begun outside. It rained the whole way to the clinic and was just finishing when we left. A major problem in the city is that it is not really built to drain off the rain. Some streets flood here really easily and pretty high.
The clinic was an experience in itself. (Don't worry mom, it was sanitary and there were trained professionals who handled everything well.) The odd part of the experience was the personality of my doctor. A nurse had removed the sponge we had used to cover the wound to look at it. She had then replaced the sponge with some gauze and medical tape and said that the doctor would be in shortly to look at it and stitch it up. When the doctor came by he introduced himself and then asked me to remove the tape and gauze so he could look at the wound. I said he could do it, but he sort of insisted that I do it myself. That was a bit strange. Later, Dave did not help the situation by commenting to the doctor, "...you are British right?" To which the doc replied that he was actually Australian and that Dave was close, but yet so far. (There was also an expletive in his response that will not be printed here. It was not said in a mean way towards Dave or anything, just your casual swearing.) The doctor cleaned and looked at the wound and tested to see whether there was any tendon damage and it was determined that there wasn't any. I was given the option of stitches or glue to close the wound and opted for glue. So, they glued it shut and I paid and we all left.
I mentioned the heavy rain and flooding problems before. When we left the clinic, the water was up to the middle of Dave's calf and when a car drove by and created a small wave that splashed up to Dave's knee. There was doubt in our minds whether the girls' Camry was going to be able to handle the flooding. Yet hearing that it would take a couple hours for the water on the street to go down and seeing some other small cars managing to navigate the street, we decided to go. We did make it out to the main road which had less water. However, we quickly found ourselves in a horrible traffic jam. We went only a few blocks in the matter of over 2 hours. Over that time, each of us had time to get out of the car for different reasons at times. Dave had only had a light lunch and so he got out and waded over to grab a snack at KFC. A little later, Christine got out and bought a drink and also found a bathroom. I also had to get out and answer nature's call. We were all able to take care of these errands without worrying about not being able to find the car when we came back because it was in basically the same place as when we left. We eventually decided to turn around and find a side road that led over to a mall where we ate pizza because it was now the dinner hour.
Dinner provided its own small piece of abnormality as a young man came and sat at our table while we were eating and sort of talked to us for a minute or two. He had a small mental problem and had his brother or friend with him, so we weren't worried, but it was just a bit weird on a day that had already seen its share of strange occurrences. Yet the adventure was not over yet.
After dinner, we got back in the car and continued home. There was still plenty of traffic, but we were moving, which was good and an improvement from before. We were moving in the direction of home, when there was a startling bump - someone had rear-ended us in the traffic. They were not going too fast. We got out to look at the damage. The bumper was a bit dented. The driver of the other car spoke some English and suggested that we pull over to the side of the road to look at it more closely and presumably to discuss how much money he would give us to cover some of the damage. However, he used the opportunity of Christine moving her car out of the way of his car to completely turn around and drive off the other way as Dave gave a short, but vain pursuit. We continued on the way home and finally made it. I had cut my hand and we headed to the clinic around 3:30 pm and left the clinic at approximately 4:45pm. We did not arrive home until 9pm! [A good portion of that time just sitting in traffic.] The cut on my hand was just the beginning of a series of interesting events.
Overall, it was not so bad as there was plenty of time for conversations and now a story to tell - what a day!
