Seven Words on a Screen

The phone rested beside Maya’s knee on the frayed edge of the rug. Its screen lit up the dark corner of the room with a sharp glare.

Maya did not move her hand. She watched the glow fade before lighting again.

A single text message appeared across the lock screen.

Maya please. You didn’t see what happened. You don’t have the facts.

She pressed her thumb into the center of her left palm, her nail digging into the skin until it turned pale. The banner vanished into black. He was still trying to scrub the day clean with seven words. He was sitting in the air-conditioned kitchen while Karen swept up the wrapping paper and Tyler admired his trophy on the sideboard.

“Don’t read it,” Rosa said from the sink, rinsing the tea cups.

“I’m not,” Maya said.

Two seconds later, the glass hummed against the floorboards. The screen flashed with numbers without a caller ID.

Maya reached down and placed her flat palm over the glass. The rhythmic vibration pulsed against her flesh, steady and persistent as a heart rate. She felt the heavy hum in her wrist bones, but she held her breath and let the call go to voicemail. The room fell quiet again except for the drip of the faucet.

“He’ll call three times,” Maya muttered to the wall. “Then he’ll stop.”

Before her hand left the screen, the light flared back to life. The ten digits flickered across the display.

She snatched the phone off the floor. Fury hot enough to scorch her throat swept away the quiet exhaustion. She swiped the green icon and yanked the speaker to her ear before the second ring could end.

“Stop calling me,” Maya snapped into the receiver, her voice sharp as broken glass. “I saw everything I needed to see. Leave me alone.”

Silence stretched across the line, heavy and hollow. No rasp of her father clearing his throat. No apologetic mumbling from Karen.

“Is this Maya?” a woman asked. The voice was flat and stripped of emotion.

Maya held the phone tighter, her knuckles turning white. “Who is this?”

“My name is Sarah,” the woman said. A faint beep of medical monitors echoed behind her words, accompanied by the rumble of a PA system. “I’m a triage supervisor at St. Jude Memorial Hospital.”

Maya’s throat closed. The anger in her chest turned to ice.

“We have a patient here named David,” the nurse continued, her words precise. “He was brought in by county ambulance six minutes ago. Your number was listed on his emergency contact card.”

Maya stood up from the floor, her knees locking as the small room seemed to tilt. “What are you talking about? He was at home.”

“He was admitted through emergency cardiology,” Sarah said. “I need you to come to the main desk right now.”