At 3 a.m., seventeen missed calls and a desperate text jolted me awake: “Dad, help! Come fast!” I rushed to my daughter’s house, but she hadn’t contacted me. When she saw the number, her face went pale. “Dad… that’s Helen’s number.”
Helen, my youngest daughter, had died in a car accident a year earlier. Before I could process it, another message arrived: “I am still waiting. Where are you?”
With trembling hands, I called. A young woman answered, crying because her car had broken down. She was trying to reach her father through an old saved number, and her desperate calls had reached me.
I stayed on the line until help arrived, then cried in my car until sunrise. For a few fleeting moments, those unexpected calls had made me feel close to Helen again.
This is a fictional story inspired by real events. Names and details have been altered.
