This article has been hell to write. I write plenty of things on the condition of politics here, or the bird flu, and occasionally on the different holidays we have here. And those have to be researched and proper HTML codes applied, etc. It's a bit of work. But this article has hurt to write and it hurts to send out.

My wife works as a babysitter. Right now that is our only income. She pulls in about NIS 3,300 a month. On Sunday, 14 May, at about 10:00 in the morning, she was at work taking care of a nine-month-old girl who was asleep at the time. Her employer, a freelance writer (we'll call her Miriam) had just gone out of the apartment to visit with some neighbors. My wife (we'll call her Dina) was cooking the toddler's lunch and the kitchen was getting hot. She got on a chair to reach the window to open it. She had gotten the window open and was starting to get off the chair when the cushion of the chair slipped backwards and Dina fell forward hitting her nose on the marble kitchen counter. All she was aware of was pain in her nose and blood flowing all over the place as she fell to the floor.

She had the presence of mind to get up, walk in pain to her cell phone and dial up the emergency number of the ambulance. Dina is not a Hebrew speaker and she told the folks in English at the Red Shield of David (commonly abbreviated from the Hebrew Magen David Adom, as MaD"A) that she was bleeding. There were enough English speakers at MaD"A for her to be understood. After taking the address of the residence my wife was working at, they told her to leave the door open so they would know which apartment in the building to enter. Dina opened the door, and afterwards started to scream for Miriam. This screaming awakened her nine-month-old charge. In addition, she had the presence of mind to get out a bag of frozen vegetables to put on her nose. Looking back, she probably stopped a lot of the bleeding with that bag of frozen veggies.

Miriam finally returned, not realizing what had happened, and surveyed the kitchen floor covered with blood. She exclaimed with shock, and asked my wife what happened. Dina explained that she had already called the ambulance.