The Emergency Contact

“David, do you have a second?”

I looked up from my screen. Meagan stood by my desk, clutching her laptop in her left hand. I knew that look. I’d seen it three times last week.

“I’m stuck on that data reconciliation thing again.” She met my eyes briefly, then looked down. “I know you just showed me last Tuesday, but now I’m getting a different error.”

I glanced at the deck I had to finish for tomorrow’s internal review, then at my watch. I couldn’t be late for tonight’s dinner.

“Did you go through the training video? I thought it was self-explanatory.”

“I did, but you explain things so well. I’d save so much time if you just showed me once more. I promise.. it will be done in ten minutes.”

It wouldn’t take ten minutes. It never did. I felt the familiar heat of irritation in my ribs.

“Okay, pull up a chair.”

The relief on her face made me feel useful at first. Then resentful. Why couldn’t I just tell her to try it herself? I had almost opened my mouth to suggest she work through it on her own. The words were right there: ‘I can’t help you right now.’ But my throat tightened, and the words just didn’t come. She rolled a chair over when my phone buzzed against the desk. Unknown number. I silenced it.

“So, I can’t understand which columns to choose...” Meagan began.

My phone rang again. Same number.

“Sorry.” I silenced it.

Then it rang a third time. “Sorry, can you give me a moment?” I stood up without looking at Meagan and picked up the phone.

“Is this David Chen?” A woman asked in a brisk tone that suggested this wasn’t a sales call.

“Yes?”

“I am calling from the Elmhurst Hospital. You’re listed as the emergency contact for Sarah Hooper. She was brought in about an hour ago. We need you to come in.”

I hadn’t heard that name in three years. I had met Sarah during our final year at college in Connecticut. We dated through graduation and into those first chaotic months in New York, when the pandemic shut everything down.

“Sorry, but there must be some mistake,” I said.

“You are David Chen? Birth date 20 March, 1989? Currently residing on 125th Street, Uptown Manhattan?”

“Yes, that’s me, but I haven’t—”

“Then I’m afraid there is no mistake. Sarah is stable now, but we need you here. How soon can you get here?”

I looked at my desk, then at Meagan, who was staring at me. I thought about all the work I needed to finish. Then I thought about Sarah.

“I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

The waiting room was half-empty, but the fluorescent lights gave it a hollow feeling. I dropped into an orange plastic chair that seemed engineered for discomfort. The nurse had handed me a form, and I worked through it mechanically until I reached “Relationship to patient?”

My pen hovered over the line. “Ex-boyfriend” would lead to more questions than I wanted to answer. I eventually wrote “Acquaintance”. The nurse collected the clipboard without looking at it and said, “The doctor will come and talk to you soon.”

I sat back and tried to remember Sarah with any kind of precision, but she kept slipping away. What came first was how she used to hesitate at parties, making some offhand comment and then spending the next hour asking me if it sounded stupid.

Then I remembered the crying. First, about her inability to find a job after graduation, then about the fear of settling in New York. All I could do was listen and hold her afterward, and tell her the same things every time. That it would get better. That we’d figure it out. But the crying never stopped.

Then came the harder memories. Her calling me a “mama’s boy” when I was on the phone with my mom, then breaking down because of her own dysfunctional relationship with her mother. The constant comparisons to Marcus, one of our seniors at college who’d dumped her before we got together. How she’d mention the way he carried himself, then tell me I needed to grow a spine and confront the professor who was making my life hell.

But it had taken me too long to realize I was never her boyfriend. I was more like her career counselor cum punching bag. Everything I’d given, she’d taken. And when I’d finally worked up the courage to end it, she seemed almost unsurprised. She’d never planned to keep me around long anyway.

And yet here I was, three years later, still the person she wanted in a crisis.

“Mr. Chen?” A young doctor approached me. His badge read Dr. Patel. “Ms. Hooper is stable. She experienced a severe panic attack that led to hyperventilation and fainting. We’ve run some tests. Physically, she’s fine. But she was quite disoriented when she came in.”

“What caused it?”

“Hard to say definitively. It seems like she experienced sudden high stress and anxiety.” He paused, studying me. “According to her coworkers, she just stood up from her desk and collapsed. How well do you know Ms. Hooper?”

I hesitated. “We dated briefly years ago. That’s why I am surprised that I’m still listed as her contact.”

Dr. Patel squinted, studying me for a moment. Recognition, maybe. Or pity.

“Well, she’s awake now. Room 315, third floor.” He glanced at his tablet. “Just try to keep her calm. Panic attacks can escalate if the patient gets agitated.”

Sarah was wearing a faded blue hospital gown and staring out the window when I entered her room. She looked paler than I remembered, her hair longer now, straightened and hanging past her shoulders. I could see her collarbones sharp beneath the gown’s neckline.

“Hey,” I said softly.

She turned at once. Relief spread across her face, maybe surprise too, that I’d actually come. Dark circles shadowed her eyes. When she smiled, it came tentatively at first, then widened.

“David. You came.”

“Of course I did. They said you collapsed. What happened?”

She went quiet, staring down at the blanket in her lap. Several seconds passed before she spoke. “This is embarrassing. I’m sorry they called you.”

I pulled a chair close to the bed and sat. “Don’t apologize. But ... how did you collapse? Your coworkers said it happened at your desk.”

She looked back out the window. “My manager called me in this morning. They’re laying me off in two weeks.” Her voice went flat. “I just... couldn’t process it. Everything went dark.”

“I’m sorry.” I meant it, even with everything else. “Was the layoff performance related? Or was it part of a bigger round of cuts?”

She was quiet for a long moment. Too long.

“Sarah?”

“I hadn’t been coming in regularly. They made it an in-office policy a few months ago, but I just...” She trailed off. “You know how hard it is for me to talk to people. After I started coming in, I struggled to get my points across. Eventually, I just... stopped going. But I really needed this job.” She looked at me, and tears slowly welled up in her eyes. She wiped them quickly and looked down.

I waited for her to continue, but she didn’t. The silence stretched between us, uncomfortable.

“I have to ask,” I said finally. “Why am I still your emergency contact? We haven’t spoken in three years.”

She looked at me directly for the first time. “After we broke up, I dated someone for almost two years. He knew everything about me - my fears, my anxiety, all of it. When it ended, he wrote me this three-page letter explaining why I was the way I was. He thought he was being helpful, but it just made me feel... dissected.”

I stayed quiet.

“And Monica .. do you remember Monica? My friend who always came to the movies with us?” She didn’t wait for me to answer.

“She moved to New York last year. We meet up often now. She’s wonderful, but she’s also a management consultant, so whenever something goes wrong, she immediately tries to fix it. ‘You need more sleep,’ or ‘Try this breathing technique,’ or ‘Have you considered therapy?’ She means well, but I don’t want solutions now. I never wanted them.”

“I am sorry Sarah, but that still doesn’t answer my question,” I said without looking directly at her now.

“If I am being honest, I’d forgotten I even listed you. But sitting here now, I realize nobody else would’ve just come and sat like this.” She looked at me with something like gratitude. “Thank you for coming, David.”

I felt the familiar pull to reassure her, to say it would all work out. But wasn’t that exactly what I’d done before? Comfort her, absorb everything, throw my own plans aside to fix problems that weren’t mine to fix?

They discharged her at 6:30 PM. We rode the elevator down in silence. The sun was setting as we stepped outside, the city lights starting to flicker on. She turned to me, something like hope in her eyes.

“I still listen to those conspiracy theory podcasts sometimes,” she said. “The ones you used to play when we’d drive around Connecticut. Do you still have that red Mazda?”

I remembered the first time I had given her a ride back home from the university. We’d talked the whole way, and by the time we reached her place, something had shifted between us.

I didn’t want that to happen again.

“I have an anniversary dinner to get to,” I said, pulling out my phone. “But I’ll call you a cab.”

“Oh.” Her face fell. “I didn’t realize you were seeing someone.”

“I’m not,” I said. The cab app was loading. “It’s my parents’ thirtieth anniversary.”

She was quiet for a moment.

“That’s… good, David,” she said finally.

The cab pulled up. She got in.

“Take care of yourself, Sarah,” I said as the door closed.

“You too.”