Phone call

It was 6am when the alarm went off. Judy woke up with a severe backache. She was having a lot of difficulty to rise and shut the alarm that blared on a table on the other side of the room.

Judy lived alone in a studio apartment so she took her time to get out of bed. She needn't worry about waking someone in her apartment. But she was afraid; she didn't want to wake her neighbours.

While freeing herself from the blanket Judy complained," Fall has not yet arrived and my back already hurts like hell."

After a lot of effort she was finally out of bed. She walked over to the desk to shut the alarm off but she realized the alarm went off on its own, after ringing for too long. She purposely kept her clock away from her bed. It gave her a reason to get out of bed. She grabbed a book from her shelf and went to sit on her rocking chair and read. That's what she did everyday. She was accustomed to the routine. In her empty life reading consumed a major part of her day.

It was sometime around 8am when she decided to get up and get fresh. She walked into the bathroom to follow her daily regime. Judy is 60 years old. At her age getting bored didn't make her overwhelmed. She was too slow to get bored.

After getting ready she watered her plants and talked to them. She had no one else to talk to.

 “Today the alarm stopped on its own again. I wonder when I will be able to shut it on time. It is a fun game for me.” Judy talked to her aloe vera plant.

She continued, “Everyday I keep a record of how fast I can reach the table after waking up.”

Judy shifted to the next plant and started watering it, she said, “Today my back hurts so bad. It just gets worse in the winter.”

“I miss Natalie. I wonder if she is doing fine. It’s been a long time since I last talked to her.”

Judy walked to her kitchen after she finished watering her plants. She took out the flour from the cabinet. She wanted to have cereals but it was kept a bit high on the shelf. Her back pain didn’t allow her to make much movement, so she was compelled to make some pancakes.

She was stirring the mix in bowl thinking how Natalie loved to eat pancakes, as a child. She missed Natalie.

“Why didn’t she call me? Is she okay?”

Suddenly Judy felt panic arise in her system. Blood rushed through her veins making her feel nauseous all of a sudden.

She mumbled again, “Why didn’t Natalie call me for so long? Is she alive?” she trembled at the thought.

Her heart was racing so hard and fast that she was out of breath. She dropped the bowl on the table. Even in the fall, sweat broke on her forehead. Soon she started to sweat profusely, yet her hands and feet were as cold as ice. She was numb to her deepest core of her heart.

She pulled a chair and sat down, shaking. She gritted her teeth to stop trembling.

She felt a lump in her throat. Judy grabbed a glass with her clumsy, cold and sweaty fingers and poured water from a jug. Water spilled all over the table. She grabbed the glass tighter. If she had put a little bit more pressure the glass would have broken and injured her hand.

After a lot of struggle, she half-filled her glass and gulped down the water. She tried to wash down the lump of anxiety from her throat.

“Natalie is healthy and alive. She didn’t call me because she is busy with her work.” Judy talked out loudly to herself.

She tried to pacify herself when the negative thoughts fought back their way into her mind again. “What if she is dead?” She asked herself.

“If she is dead someone would have definitely informed me,” she reassured herself.

“Maybe I’m going to get a call anytime soon.”

“Where is my phone?” Judy looked around for her phone.

“Where the hell is my phone,” she hissed at herself.

She stood up awkwardly from her chair. She felt her head rush and knees wobble. She somehow stumbled her way to her room. She rummaged through her drawers in search of the phone. At last she found it, right in the place where she always keeps it, on the table. But she didn’t have the state of mind to escort her thoughts.

Judy went through her contacts and called Natalie. The phone rang on the other side, but nobody picked it up. Judy kept on calling Natalie. After trying for like a hundred times, Judy stopped.

She reasoned with herself,” Natalie is fine. It is all in my head. My GAD is just getting worse day by day.”

It’s then when she remembered that she forgot to take her anxiety pills. She walked to her bed with her weak, shaking and wobbling knees and grabbed the pills from her nightstand. She took a pill and chugged it down with some water.

Her head felt light and she felt dizzy. She crept under her blanket and decided to take some rest.

It was 3pm when Judy woke up from her deep slumber. She was still feeling weak and exhausted. That is the thing with anxiety, it feels as if you ran a mile while in reality you are in bed doing nothing but worrying.

Judy was starving. She slowly got out of her bed and walked to her kitchen. The kitchen was a mess. There was flour all over the floor. The mix and the water from the jug spilled over the table and trickled down to the floor from the sides of the counter. But Judy didn’t remember making a mess. She was so much stuck inside her mind that she forgot what had happened.

“It’s been 2 years I’ve been getting anxiety attacks. Yet I never get used to them. Every time it feels like the first time. In fact it feels worse,” she whispered to her empty apartment.

Judy let out a heavy sigh. She felt a pain in her chest.

In the mean time Judy heard her phone ring. She dragged herself to her room. She checked the caller ID. It was an unknown number. She picked up the phone.

“Hello?”

“Hello, am I speaking to Judy Waters?”

“Yes you are”

“Is Natalie Waters your daughter?”

Judy felt blood draining from her veins. She answered in short,” Yes”

“Ma’am is there anyone with you right now?” the voice asked

“No.”

“Ma’am I want you to call someone to attend you right away.”

“What happened to Natalie?” Judy asked breathlessly, ignoring the strangers concern.

“I am Officer Joshua Green. Your daughter met an accident on her way to Ottawa on highway 401, east and she passed away this morning. So we are calling you.”

A deadly silence fell across the line. The officer dealt with such things everyday. Instead of feeling uncomfortable, the officer spoke in a gentle tone.

“Ma’am? Ma’am are you on the line?”

“Yes,” a deep hoarse voice spoke from the other end.

“One of our officers is going to pick you up. You need to identify the body.”

“The body”, Judy repeated the last words to herself.

Judy had no idea when the officer came and drove her to Toronto but she was standing inside a dingy, cold morgue to identify Natalie.

A man came and lifted the cover to expose Natalie’s face.

Natalie’s face was clean. There was no sign of injury. It looked like she was sleeping. Judy looked at her for a second before she screamed out, “NO!”

Judy opened her eyes, feeling suffocated. She looked around herself.  She was in her small apartment in Ottawa on her bed. It took her quite a while before realization dawned upon her that he was having a bad dream.

Her phone started to ring. Judy flinched when the ringtone went off loudly in her silent apartment. It was Natalie. Judy snatched the phone from the nightstand answered the phone in a haste.

“Hello?”

“Hi mom. Sorry I was busy. I didn’t get time to call you.”

Judy let out a sigh of relief hearing Natalie’s voice on the other side of the phone. She didn’t have any idea what Natalie was speaking. She was just too happy to hear her voice humming on the other side of the line.