When Miriam called me up on the cell phone to tell me my wife was on the way to Sha'arei Tzedek Hospital in an ambulance, I could see the disaster unfolding before us. But at that moment, I had to meet Dina there. So I took a cab, NIS 40, to get to the hospital. While riding in the cab, Dina called me up on the cell phone to tell me where she was in the Emergency Department of Sha'arei Tzedek. She said it was the "Acute Care Center." In Hebrew, this translates into "Immediate Care Center."

After I arrived at the hospital and got through security, I walked into the Emergency Department and wandered around to see where my wife was. I found her in a room with a blinking nurses' light. She looked as if she had been in a bar brawl or as if her husband had beaten her up (gee, did I say that - I'm her husband). Her eyes were black and blue, her hands were sticky with blood, and there was blood all over her blouse and pants. Her nose was swollen and the part of her face between her nostrils and her lips had swollen up as well. No nurse came in answer to the blinking light.

Dina told me what had happened to her and the various tests the doctors had taken. Apparently the damage to the nose was not all there was. The doctors had run her through a CT scan to see if her ribs were broken and, more importantly, if a broken rib had damaged an organ and caused internal bleeding. When she asked the doctors and techs about a tomography on her nose, they had just shrugged. It hadn't been on their orders.

I finally realized the "immediate" in the "Immediate Care Center" title was a perfunctory term to impress potential donors. I went to another room and got a chair so I would be able to sit down and then got some tissues to clean up Dina's hands, face, arms, and thighs. The nurses' light was still blinking.

We stayed at the hospital in the Emergency Department until about 17:30 and then we took a cab home. Another NIS 40. My wife was not admitted to stay at the hospital. It was not necessary for her health.