APRIL 14, 2007
It started at 5am when I woke to the sound of my cell phone ringing, which was odd being that only four people have my number and none of them would call my cell without first trying our land line. 'Wrong number,' I thought and rolled over to go back to sleep, but my cell started ringing again minutes later. Worried that maybe it was an emergency, I finally went to get my phone and found the following message on my voice mail:
"Yeah, James, it's 5am or there about. I'd like to have a cup of coffee with you, man, if you're up to it. Give me a call and we'll... I've got a place in mind that I'd like to go and just be away from it. Talk to you later. Bye."
So it was a wrong number because I'm not James, nor do I know the guy who left the message, but I was worried because the guy who called seemed like he was in bad shape. He sounded sad and his speech was slow and full of sighs, like he was either drunk or depressed, and I couldn't help but feel for him because he obviously wasn't having a good day, but I told myself it was silly to stay awake worrying over a wrong number so I went back to bed. But an hour later, it happened again. At 6am my cell phone rang, so I stumbled out to see who called, and it was the same guy, except this time his message sounded more desperate and concerning:
"I need your help. I need help. I can help you at the same time. Please call."
A voice mail like that can throw you for a loop. Regardless of whether you know the person, getting a call at 6am from someone pleading for help is alarming, especially since when the guy finished the message, he didn't hang up his phone properly so I could hear what was going on in the background. The guy obviously wasn't alone because someone was talking to him and, while the speech was garbled by my cell, it sounded like the guy was at a hospital. Then the line went dead and that was the end of the message.
At that point I woke Ross and played the messages for him. At first he didn't understand the gist of the situation, what with being half asleep, but hearing the voice mail from this stranger woke him right up. I watched Ross' face as he listened to the second message, the one where the guy cryptically says he needs help, and Ross' eyes widened with concern.
"What should we do?" I asked, although I already knew the answer. We had to get ahold of this guy to let him know he was calling the wrong number and that whoever he was trying to reach hadn't received his messages. But I'm shy and socially retarded so I didn't want to call a stranger at 6am at an unfamiliar number so Ross, ever the brave one, called the number back.
It rang once and a voice on the other end picked up and said, "Legacy Good Samaritan Hospital, how can I help you?" Ross sat there a second not knowing how to explain the situation, but finally told the woman at the hospital that someone had called us twice from their number, but that the guy had dialed wrong and we weren't the ones he was trying to call, but we thought we should call back because the guy sounded like he was in bad shape and really needed to get ahold of whoever he was trying to call.
The woman didn't sound surprised, working at a hospital I'm sure she gets odder calls than ours on a daily basis, and she politely asked what the name of the man who'd called our number was and whether he left a number where he could be reached. "Well, that's the problem," Ross told her, "he didn't leave a name or number or say who he was calling." The woman was silent when Ross told her that and I expected her to say she couldn't help or even growl at us for wasting her time, but she finally asked for our cell phone number and said she'd try to locate the guy that way then thanked us for calling and hung up, at which point we assumed the situation was taken care of.
After catching some more sleep, I woke later in the day and wandered out to check my cell phone and found that Ross had turned it off before he left to go to his niece's harp recital. It had taken me hours to get back to sleep after the early morning calls and Ross, being the thoughtful chap that he is, had the foresight to turn my phone off so that I could get my beauty rest. And it's a good thing he did because I'm a beast when I don't get at least 6 hours sleep and, sure enough, when I turned my cell phone back on, there was a slew of messages, and all from the mystery caller.
Obviously the hospital hadn't been able to figure out who was calling us, or maybe they didn't even try, because my phone log showed that this guy had been calling throughout the day, although he only left three actual messages. But the three messages he did leave? They were disturbing because the guy became more incoherent with each successive message he left...
"James, uh, got through to you, at least you, at least the way I'm able to record message. Need my car keys. Do you have them? You got my number. Got to be able to meet within reasonable time exchange car keys. Bye."
"James... Car keys. Do you have them? Thank you, bye."
"Car... Car keys. I've, uh... [incoherent words, labored breathing] Bye."
I sat there feeling rotten after that. Poor guy. You couldn't help but feel for him, not to mention wonder who he was, and I kept picturing him sitting sadly in the hospital wondering why his buddy wasn't returning his calls. That, and I was concerned about the fact that this guy was intent on getting his car keys when he couldn't even form coherent sentences. Getting behind the wheel of a car seemed like the last thing he should do but, after all the time I've spent in hospitals due to kidney stones, I also understand the intense desire to flee hospitals, even if it means driving down the sidewalk hopped up on morphine.
I kept my phone on after that hoping the guy would call so that we could talk to him directly and let him know he was calling the wrong number, but the phone was silent for hours. Finally, around 8pm, 15 hours after this weird game of phone tag began, my phone rang and Ross dove for it like he was expecting a call from Ed McMahon and the Prize Patrol. It was hospital dude.
We were excited to talk to hospital dude because we'd been worrying about him all day, that and we were curious to know the story behind all of this. Who was this guy? Why was he in the hospital? Was he ok? Did he need any help? But as soon as Ross told him that he'd been calling the wrong number, hospital dude was utterly mortified and said, "oh god, I am so sorry, I won't bother you again." At that point Ross tried to explain that we'd called the hospital earlier trying to get ahold of him to let him know about the mix up because we wanted him to know that his calls hadn't been ignored, but hospital dude didn't let Ross say much. He just mumbled that he was profoundly sorry, said that he wouldn't bother us ever again, then hung up.
And that was it, the very anti-climatic end to our whirlwind friendship with hospital dude. We never found out who he was, why he was in the hospital, or if he was ok and after literally losing sleep over him and spending the whole day worrying I was disappointed. It was like watching a mystery movie where the plot thickens and the suspense builds the entire time but fails to connect the dots or offer any answers in the end.
"Call him back!" I finally said to Ross and he just looked at me like I was nuts. "We don't know the guy's name or what room he's in so we have no way to call him and, even if we did, what am I supposed to say? Hi, you don't know me, but tell me your life story anyway?" Ross said with a bit of sarcasm. "No, tell him that your wife needs closure," I said, only half joking, but Ross just chuckled and said that sleep was the only closure I really needed. And based on the fact that I just wrote a 1,500+ word entry about a wrong number (and congratulations to you if you're still awake and reading!), I think Ross may be right. But I still can't help but wonder about the guy who kept calling.
So, if nothing else, good luck to you, hospital dude. Hopefully you'll eventually get ahold of the friend you're trying to call, find your car keys, and invest in a cell phone that remembers important phone numbers for you.
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