Crosed Lines, by Rosina Trotman

                 And the telephone rang.

I had been suffering all day with a tooth infection which had exposed a nerve; consequently every intake of breath was sheer agony when, the telephone rang. My husband was at a critical stage in his tiling project which could not be left, and yelled to me to answer it. Reluctantly I dragged myself off the settee and gave my number; there was what seemed like a long pause before a voice said,

“Is that you Ross?” I answered that it was in a tone injected with pain, and lacking anything resembling my normal cheerful telephone manner.

“It doesn’t sound like you said the voice,” I then asked who it was and the voice started to laugh and said,

 “It’s Pauline. We were together last night, remember? What’s the matter with you?”  I then began telling her how suddenly this pain had come on after leaving her and how I had not slept all night but had first thing that morning been to the dentist, only to be told it was infected. I then went on to say he thought a nerve might be exposed but because of the infection he couldn’t do anything until the antibiotics had done their job.

At this point I felt some relief at having someone making what sounded like sympathetic noises. So I continued on with all the other facts he had given me. One he may not be able to save the tooth and that would mean a day in hospital. Or on the other hand if the infection goes down as he hoped, then he could remove the nerve and not disturb the tooth. On and on I unloaded my depression and pain, when I suddenly realized how selfish I was; as I knew Pauline had so much going on in her own life at the moment.

          So I changed the subject and asked, “How are you managing?”

“Managing!” she said, “What do you mean?”

“Well with two children and another one due any day it must be exhausting,” I said.

          “Who am I speaking to?” said the voice on the other end of the line.

The strange thing was, her name was Pauline and she had been out the night before with her friend Ross just as I had. We both had a good laugh about my boring her with my tooth ache and parted like old friends.