Missed calls

My phone can go for a week at a time without receiving a single call.

This is good. I find it difficult enough to communicate with people face to face and know how to react, let alone over a thin wire covering vast distances.

Add to this the fact that whenever my phone rings it inevitably brings me more work. Piles of the stuff. To add to the piles I'm already surrounded with.

My darling used to call me every day at work. That was a phonecall I didn't mind taking. And if he skipped a day it was just because I'd called him instead.

That hasn't happened for a long time. Oh sure, we still call each other at work - we're not estranged or anything - but not every day. Sometimes not even every week.

So today when I returned from a morning in the training room - built for twenty, occupied by two - and found a series of missed calls from my beloved I immediately jumped to the most logical conclusion.

Someone had died.

In retrospect I can't think of anyone's death that would have simultaneously necessitated the repeated phonecalls while also requiring my darling to continue to stay at work, but panic doesn't have time for logic.

I phoned his office number. I phoned home in case he'd left. I tried his cellphone, the one he never turns on unless he needs to make an emergency call out. I tried his work number again.

Electronic recordings mocked me at every turn.

Then I had another meeting so went off to that instead. When I returned to my desk I'd missed another phonecall, and I finally reached him at home.

He'd forgotten what he was calling about, but assured me that it wasn't anything important.

I hate the phone.