She had been on the edges of sleep; that strange time between dreaming and consciousness. A part of her was in a deep slumber and yet as her phone vibrated on her bedside table and the familiar chime of her ringtone pierced through the quiet sleepy silence, she wasn’t startled awake, but rather emerged from sleep, as if breaking the surface of the water calmly when coming up for air. It took her a moment to get her bearings.
After having been roused from being under so deep, it took her a second to realize what had woken her; before she reached for her cell blindly, without bothering to look at the caller ID. It hadn’t occurred to Emily to do so, her mind still fuzzy and acting on instinct until cognitive thinking could kick into gear. “...Hello?” she answered, her voice raspy with sleep, unsure who could possibly be calling at such a late hour. The despairing sobs sobered Emily up quickly like a bucket of freezing cold water to the face.
She frowned at first, but in the split second it took her to recognize the familiar deep resonance -- she stopped, only to hold a hand to her chest, an abyss of a well forming there; where her heart immediately dropped into darkness below. The strangled words that she clearly heard coming from him, pleading with an anguish and pain that she had never heard from him before.
It filled her with sorrow and a heartache that buried itself into her very bones. A lump had formed in her throat and any words that she may have said, disappeared, leaving her tongue blank; without a reply. It almost sounded like a completely different person, and maybe if it hadn’t been in the dead of night, and she hadn’t been talking into her phone in the pitch darkness, maybe she would have stupidly passed this off as a joke, some kind of elaborate prank of some kind. Maybe it wasn’t Stephen at all like she’d assumed, and it was someone else she knew who was going through a crisis and needed her help.
But no..she had become so familiar with the pitch of his voice, the tone of it when tethered to different emotions. There could be no doubt in her mind who was on the other end of the line and a glance at her screen confirmed it anyway. Apparently she hadn’t answered him -- again, stupid. Of course she’d come to him, she’d drop everything if that were the case. Her heart raced in her chest as she pushed the covers off of her and made her way out of her bedroom. “Y-Yes..I’m here Stephen. Of course -- I’m on my way, okay? Just..just hold on, I’ll be there really soon, stay there.”
“--Don’t..don’t do anything until I get there, okay? Please just...” she tried not to get frantic or panic, but she cared too much to have the strength to pretend like she wasn’t affected. “--..I’ll be there soon”, she promised before hanging up. Grabbing her keys and her coat, she headed out the door and luckily hailed a taxi within a minute.
She was on the verge of tears before she finally reached Stephen’s place and knocked on the door hurriedly. “Stephen..open up, it’s me.”
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