The Call

Sometimes, it's about people you never met, but it affects you because you had heard so much about them, and you were looking forward to the chance of meeting them later.

Usually, it's about someone you love, it's the call you always dread when you left home to live abroad.

It's always at night or early in the morning, or at least it always seems so. It's the call that tells you to come home, you mother is worse and won't last much longer. You board the plane hoping to arrive in time; you land, and it was too late. It's the call that tells you your father-in-law has died, and you have to turn and tell your wife, but she already knows.

Three days ago, again, the call woke us in the morning: this time from the rehabilitation center: my father had, suddenly, worsened, and the head nurse had requested an ambulance to take my father to the emergency room.

We arrived as soon as possible, to be told that my father was again struggling for his life. The doctor on duty didn't give us much of a chance, then, but my father survived the night, and the next one. Now he is back in a hospital ward, still conscious, but very weak.

Back to where we were almost three months ago.