[ IP ] `` Dial 0 for crew , 911 emergency , 68 for bedtime stories . '' [ x /r/mildlyinteresting ]

My Mom had given me the phone when I was seven because she was a doctor and she often was n't home. She left a nanny of course, but I had such nightmares when I was a child that I often could n't sleep without hearing my mother's voice. 
 
 `` Six and then eight,'' she kissed my forehead. `` I'll pick up or call back as soon as I can, my darling.'' 
 
 I called her every night she was away and she would tell me stories or read to me until I had fallen asleep. She would hang up and I would wake the next morning to the static of the dead line sitting on my pillow. 
 
 One night, a few weeks after my ninth birthday, she did n't pick up the line. I waited for her to call back, but she never did. The next morning the doorbell rang, and when my nanny came into my room her face was wet with tears and she hugged me to her chest and whispered to me that I would be ok. 
 
 The day I said goodbye I spent the rest of the day on my bed, dressed in black with my shoes still on. I turned toward the phone and dialed the two numbers, my hands shaking even as the line rang. 
 
 *We're sorry, this number has been disconnected. * 
 
 I cried and cried and cried until I drifted off to sleep. 
 
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 For ( less? ) depressing things, visit /r/Celsius232
