As weird as the day was with Peter, I did my best to brush it aside and move on like the bizarre experience hadn’t happened. Several more patients came and left throughout the day, and by 5 p.m. I was over the strange case of the man in the autorefractor.
   My afternoon routine is always the same. I pack up at 4:45 after doing my rounds, saying goodbye to the other techs and Dr. Mason (if he wasn’t in a room finishing up with the final patient of the day). Then, I jump in my green 2009 Grand Caravan and drive to pick up Trinity from her after-school program. Shelly was a single mother thanks to the human bag of trash that was her ex (I still relished how right I was about him), and she relied on me to help her with Trinity in the afternoons. I didn’t mind one bit—this was what grandmas were for—and I delighted in spending time with my granddaughter.
   After arriving at the school at around 5:15, I drive Trinity back to my house, and she breaks out the coloring books or the Play-Doh. Shelly swings by between 6 and 6:15 p.m. and we say our goodbyes. Harold gets home from work around 7, and I have dinner ready on the stove.
   In my mind, the tragedy that modern feminism wrought upon the world is the belief that cooking for your husband, keeping a spotless kitchen, taking pride in turning ingredients worthless on their own into a fantastic meal was all something to look down on and be ashamed of! Women nowadays were told they needed to be career driven, they needed to beat the men at their own game, they needed to reject all outdated models of living from the past and embrace the rat race of the future.
   It was all a bunch of hooey.
   I loved cooking for Harold. I loved being in my kitchen. I loved seeing the smile that came across his face when he opened the door to the house and stepped inside to smell his favorite ravioli cooking on the stove and ready for him in minutes. I loved making a house a home, something a man would never come close to doing. Women nowadays were rejecting so much of the past they were making themselves miserable in the present. This was the perfect example. Sometimes fighting the patriarchy had to wait because, my oh my, were most men terrible cooks.
   Harold arrived at seven, right as I removed his favorite green bean casserole from the oven. I set it out in front of him and he ate ravenously, seemingly unaware I was even there (they worked him to death sometimes). Then the rest of the evening was mostly unremarkable, just the way I liked it. Harold had a little dessert (my trademark red velvet cupcakes), we both showered, one after the other, we brushed our teeth, read our respective books (mine a biography of Julia Child, his a Tom Clancy novel), and then it was lights out the second the clock struck 10.
   I was only asleep for five minutes or so when the phone rang.
   Harold hated that we had a phone in the bedroom. It never rang. I made sure it never rang because only one person had the number, and she knew to only call if there was an emergency. Not an “I cut my finger slicing onions can you watch Trinity” emergency or an “I need a sitter for the date I have tomorrow” emergency. This phone was for an “I was just in a car accident and might die” or “a nuclear bomb dropped on the city” emergency. Shelly knew it. She knew never to call unless something terrible had happened. In the five years we had that phone in our room, it never rang. Not once. That’s the way I liked it; it meant Shelly was safe and all was right in the world.
   But at 10:05, it rang.
   “Shit, Gerry!” I remember Harold exclaiming, bolting upright and punching my shoulder in surprise. “The phone! The damn phone is ringing!”
   My stomach dropped. My body was ice in seconds, my skin crawling with sweat and my face numb. My mind went to the worst-case scenario immediately—Trinity had been killed in a car accident. Or Jacob had showed up at their house a drunken mess as usual and had beaten Shelly in front of Trinity. She’d never call unless it was something like that.
   “I got it,” I said, wide awake as I reached for the receiver. “Probably just a mistake, honey.”
   “Isn’t this an emergency phone?” Harold asked, the irritation in his voice from just moments ago now replaced with the same quivering trepidation as mine.
   I held the phone to my ear.
   “Shelly?”
“Hello?”
   “Hello…Shelly is that you?”
   “No.”
   No?
   What the heck? Only Shelly had this phone number. What was this? A telemarketer? At 10 p.m.?
   “It’s not Shelly?” Harold asked.
   I waved him off.
   “Who is this, then? Why are you calling?”
   “This is Peter. Do you remember me, Mrs. Manning?”
   My blood began to run hot again. Peter, the patient with the conversational ability of a corpse and a temperament that would make an asylum patient blush, was calling my emergency phone at 10 p.m.? I didn’t even give him my number?
   “Peter? Peter Clark from Dr. Mason’s? Peter…why are you calling me at ten at night?”
   “I—I’m sorry, did I wake you?”
   I couldn’t tell which was stranger—that Peter was actually apologizing about something or that he didn’t find it weird that an old woman like me who started her days at 5 a.m. would be in bed by 10.
   “Peter…I’m sorry, but whatever you have to say will have to wait until morning. If you call Dr. Mason’s and leave a message, I can get back to you in a timely manner. Now please…delete this number. This is a personal number, and I don’t know how you got it—”
   “You gave it to me.”
   “I—I did not—” I stammered, again waving off Harold, who was practically pulling my arm out of my socket trying to get some information on what the heck this call was even about.
   “Yes, you did.” 
   “Please don’t call this number again, the only number you should be calling is Dr. Mason’s office number. I can give it to you tomorrow. Now, goodnight—”
   “Wait! Mrs. Manning, please wait!”
   “Peter, I—”
   “It can’t wait until morning. I promise this will be quick. Please. I need to tell you this.”
   “What is going on?” Harold mouthed to me. “Who’s Peter?”
   I waved him off a third time and squeezed the phone even tighter than I already was as I said through gritted teeth:
   “Okay, Peter…what do you have to tell me?”
   “Okay…” he said, the desperation in his voice finally fading, “I wanted to tell you how thankful I am for you letting me see that beautiful picture—”
   Oh my gosh.
   “It’s the most beautiful picture I’ve ever seen, and right as I got home I knew I had to buy my own autorefractor.”
   He’s talking about that darn farm picture again.
   “I talked my uncle into it, and we drove to that medical store over on Ambrose and bought one. He helped me set it up and everything this evening, but when I turned it on I didn’t see the farm. It was a picture of a hot air balloon…not a farm like the autorefractor in Dr. Mason’s office.”
   “Well, yes, Peter, some of the autorefractors have different pictures in them. It’s not always a farm like the one in Dr. Mason’s office.”
   “Well, I want to see that one you see. It got me thinking that…well…even if I do manage to find the autorefractor I need that has the farm picture and not the hot air balloon picture, it still might not be right because it’s not that picture. Does that make sense? I want to see that exact same picture that is in Dr. Mason’s autorefractor. I don’t think any other picture will work.”
   “Peter,” I said, all the pleasant customer service voice I had perfected over my many decades now completely vanished, “this does not make any sense. I’m sorry, but it is just a picture. A meaningless, nothing picture that is used for a simple test and that is that. Whether it be a pinwheel, a farm, or a hot air balloon, it makes no difference whatsoever. When we get the reading we need, that is that. Please do not call this number anymore. Good night.”
   I raised the phone from my ear and moved to place it back on its stand and end the call, but I wasn’t quick enough. I heard Peter’s last words on the other side of the line.
   “But Gerry…the man in the picture told me to call you.”