Chapter Text
Her phone lit up. She glanced at it—it was from an unknown number, but her phone didn’t label it as spam.
She went back to her work for a second, her initial reaction being to ignore it. But she quickly changed her mind. Few people had her number. She programmed her phone to screen for robocalls so for her to receive a call from an unknown caller with a local area code was too unusual.
“Hello?” She answered, signing off on an expense report for marketing.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I must have mis-dialed,” a woman’s voice said.
Who dials a number anymore these days? “That’s alright,” Lena said.
“Okay, sorry. Bye.”
Lena ended the call and went back to her work. An expense report from R&D. As much as she wanted to be frugal, she couldn’t justify denying R&D the largest budget. Their work was imperative, but her expectations for them were also the highest.
Her phone rang again. It looked like the same number as before. She ignored it.
Lena wanted to check the spending for the various departments compared to the previous year. She decided to reach out to Sam to talk over the numbers.
Then her phone rang yet again. From the same number.
She could have ignored it, but the woman would probably just call again. “Hello?”
“H-hello? Am I…is this Alex’s phone?” The woman asked.
“No, still me,” Lena said distractedly.
“Shoot, so sorry.”
They ended the call, only to start it up again.
“Did I dial the wrong number again?”
Lena should have been annoyed, but the exasperation and apologetic tone from the woman was a bit amusing. “It depends on whether you’re still trying to reach Alex.”
“Sorry, I thought maybe I dialed wrong the first time. And second. I guess I should’ve just checked my call history.”
“I thought maybe you were calling from a rotary phone,” she joked.
“Um…”
“Because you dialed a number. And then didn’t have a way to check…oh, never mind.”
“Oh,” the woman said, now understanding Lena’s joke. “Yeah, I…sorry, I…didn’t get a lot of sleep last night and my mind’s a little foggy. But I’m sorry to bother you again—”
“You apologize too much,” Lena said, setting her pen down.
“Sorry?”
Lena chuckled.
The woman did, too. “I walked right into that one.”
“So, would you like to figure this out the old fashioned way? You could tell me the number you’re trying to call, and I can tell you whether it’s mine?”
“No, that’s okay. I’m trying to dial from memory. I broke my phone and lost my contacts. I must have just forgotten the number.”
“What I’m piecing together is that you use a landline and lost your contacts book. Maybe if you dialed zero for the operator? Assuming you don’t know what Google is.”
“I know what google is. It’s a number.”
“Yes, but is the number you’re thinking of the right number?”
“Wow.”
“Sorry,” Lena laughed.
“I’m already struggling over here, must you make it worse?”
“I’m sorry,” Lena said again with a smile. She was rather enjoying this conversation. She recited her phone number for the woman.
“Yup, that’s what I…oh, wait! Area code!”
“Area code,” Lena said, feeling a part of having solved the mystery.
“Okay, I think I’ve got it. Thanks, and sorry again for the trouble.”
“No trouble at all. Good luck. I’m rooting for you.”
The woman chuckled. “Thanks. Um. Enjoy your day.”
“You too,” Lena said before ending the call.
The unexpected chat put her in good spirits, and she happily went back to the budgets without bothering with last year's numbers.
Lena was wrapping things up for the day when her phone lit up with a text notification. She continued to tidy up her desk and power off before grabbing her bag and checking her phone.
She smiled down at the text. She set her bag back down onto her desk to respond.
Lena waited a few seconds, but the texts stopped coming so she set her phone in her bag and left for the day.