Page 1 of When He Calls

Prologue: Brantley

"The begonias are dying," Linda says.

Her breathing is in fours. Four in, four out, the same count she's used on every call. She said she’d learned from a grief counselor two years ago, three months after her husband went down in their kitchen while she was in the next room watching the news.

"Tell me what's happening with them."

"The leaves." She sucks in a deep breath, her voice quivering ever so-slightly as she continues. "The edges are going brown. And the soil is pulling away from the sides of the pot, like it's shrinking. I changed the water schedule. I moved them closer to the window, then farther. I went to the garden center for fertilizer and the girl at the register called me sweetie and I almost—"

Her voice cuts. The fours stutter to threes, which means she's losing the structure, the feeling is bigger than the technique.

"Take your time."

"I almost fell apart. Right there. Between the potting soil and the watering cans." The breath resets. Back to fours. "I left without paying. Walked straight to the car and sat there for twenty minutes."

"Did you go back?"

"No."

"That's okay."

"It's not okay. It's a garden center. Normal people buy fertilizer at a garden center without having a breakdown."

"Normal people don't have begonias their dead husband planted."

Quiet for a beat before she exhales a large breath and sucks in a small one.

"He planted them the spring before," she says. "April. The windowsill gets the afternoon light, and he said they'd do well there. He was right. They've been doing well for two years, until now."

"Two years is a long time to keep something alive."

"Two years and three months." The correction is automatic. "If they die, that's the last... the last thing he touched that's still... growing."

Her voice on growing is shaky. The word barely makes it out.

Twenty-four minutes on the call. Her breath slows toward the end, the exhales lengthening, the body releasing tension the mind hasn't caught up to. Linda tells me more about what she enjoys about gardening, and I ask her questions I already know the answers to because she needs it. She needs the shape and the direction, the proof that a voice on the other end cares whether the begonias survive the week.

"Call the county extension office," I say. "They run a master gardener program. Someone there can look at the leaves."

"You think that'll help?"

"Worth a try."

"Thank you, Brantley."

"Anytime, Linda."

The line goes dead and the cursor pulses in the notes field.

Duration: 24 minutes. Presenting concern: grief-related anxiety. Risk assessment: low. Disposition: stable at close.

My fingers type the summary. The proper language slots in, the abbreviations, the codes, the flattening that turns a woman's dead husband's begonias into grief-related anxiety, ongoing. The file closes. Linda goes back into the system.

My hand is already reaching for the bag under my desk.

My notebook comes out. Black cover, unlined pages, the spine cracked from use. It falls open to Linda's section. Four pages. Her intake number at the top, the date of each call down the left margin, and the rest is mine. Her breathing pattern, the apartment layout she's described in pieces across five calls (two-bedroom, east side, the begonias in the kitchen window, the bedroom she hasn't changed since he died). The medications (sertraline, 50mg, recently upped). The sister in Reno she hasn't spoken to in four years. The way she says just before she says something that isn't just anything. I just miss him. I just wanted to hear a voice.

I uncap the pen and write tonight's entry below the last one. Date. Duration. Then the part that matters: Grief has taught her to make herself small enough to survive the feelings.