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My Phone Tells Me Bad Things
I know this sounds like GenX nostalgia, but I miss not carrying around a personal emergency alert system
On a Saturday a few weeks after Labor Day, my husband Josh and I woke up early and snuck out of the house, leaving the kids asleep in their beds (they’re finally old enough). He headed to the park on his bike; I went to a nearby playground to take an outdoor Pilates class (don’t judge). I rolled out my mat, lay down, looked up at the morning light streaming through the oak leaves above, and tried to take deep breaths of the crisp air through my mask. Another pandemic morning in Brooklyn.
Normally I would have put away my phone, but the kids were home alone so I left it lying on the pavement next to me. Sixteen minutes into class, I noticed a missed call alert. Then, a couple texts, the most recent of which said:
This is katy, they are taking Josh to methodist hospital
It must be part of the modern condition that, when an emergency happens, we immediately externalize ourselves and feel like we’re in a movie or outside our own bodies, already telling the story to someone. In my mind, I wrote the sentence I’m writing now: I jumped up, feeling like I was going to vomit into my mask. Was he dead?
