Flooding at home

I was attending the morning grand rounds at the hospital when my sister called. I cut the call on the third ring and sent a message back saying that I'll call her later. Within a few seconds she called back. I answered the call and whispered

'I'm on rounds... will call you later.. bye.'

About to hang up, I heard my sister saying with urgency

'No, there is a big problem at home'.

Surprised, I asked her what the problem was.

'The compound wall behind our home fell apart yesterday night in heavy rain. Along with came all the plants and plantain trees in our neighbor's home. Our house is still flooded with about a foot deep of mud and water. Mom and Dad haven't told anybody. Instead they are trying to clear it up by themselves.'

Suddenly I was very worried. Despite my colleagues gesturing me to hang up and attend round, I listened intently to the details of the matter.

<-- Here ends the 'Reader's Digest-ish' part of this post -->

Hahaha... I like that a lot. Maybe I should write to the Reader's Digest with one of my real-life stories.

But don't get mistaken. This actually happened. Yes, my house is flooded. And my folks wanted me to fly down to help them clean up. Just under three days after I came back from my vacation, I had to go back home. I didn't know what to do. I informed my colleagues that I had a problem back at home. I was relieved from the rounds.

I started making phone calls to my friends, relatives and airline agencies. After about an hour and half I was assured by my cousins that they will personally go and assess the situation and reply regarding whether I should come or not. By that time, I and my sister had decided that we both needed to fly down urgently to help my Mom and Dad.

The funniest part of the whole issue was that I couldn't really assess the situation at home; how serious it was, was my presence required or not. That is the biggest problem with staying away from home. You can't really assess the situation back at home. What my parents say, I can't generally trust.

Anyway, by afternoon, the news was in that I didn't need to fly back home after all. My cousins will urgently attend to the matter and my sister will fly down soon to settle things further.

Crazy morning!