Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head…

About ten years ago I worked in a nursing home located in a very old building, in desperate need of a new building. The build finally started and problems to the old building were patched up, not fixed.

I was working a night shift with a coworker when, around 2:00 am, a long-awaited thunderstorm arrived. We made a bet where we would have to mop up water, as the roof was leaking. Up until that night, it wasn’t too bad, just a bit of a nuisance. That night, it changed.

We made our way to the top floor where we didn’t find any water. So, we went down to the main hall, which was a more recent addition to the building. We found a giant puddle near the bar area and started mopping it up. The rain intensified and it was pouring down quite badly. From the window, we couldn’t see a thing other than rain.

At around 2:20 am, I got a call from a resident up on the top floor. At first, I heard nothing but water gushing. Then I heard this:

“Please… I’m drowning!”

I could hear the anxiety in her voice, so my coworker and I rushed up to the top floor and into her apartment. We found the resident in bed, scooted as far as she could to the left. Keep in mind that this resident couldn’t move without help, so this must have been a massive feat for her.

Water was literally pouring down into her bed. Everything was soaked, including our resident. My coworker and I moved the bed away from the water as quickly as we could. Half the ceiling had collapsed onto the bed, miraculously missing her head. The other half was hanging by a thread. My coworker ran to turn off the electricity as water was gushing out of the sockets and from the lamps. In the living room, the ceiling hadn’t yet collapsed, but the weight of the water was very visible. We managed to get our resident out of her room before the whole ceiling collapsed. My coworker made a bed for her in another room, which would be occupied the next morning, and I moved the resident to a shower room to get a nice hot shower.

The resident said to me, “Well… I bet you didn’t expect that when I called.”

“No, not really,” I replied. “I thought you were joking about drowning.”

“I wasn’t.”

“No, I know now. But I’m glad you didn’t drown in your bed.”

Then, the resident laughed and said, “That would’ve made a nice headline. Woman drowns in bed.”

“I wouldn’t have had a clue how to tell that to your children,” I told her, also laughing.

We got her into bed and checked all five other rooms on the top floor. No water was found in any of the other rooms, although we didn’t turn on the electricity on the top floor that night. We did call the fire department to check the roof and we called our boss, who wasn’t pleased we called her at 3:00 or 4:00 am, though she was glad the resident was okay. The fire department found a large hole in the roof, just above the resident’s room. It took two weeks before the resident could return to her room.