Midnightmare

The phone rang at 4am, startling me into a panicked race across the house to get the handset. I hate waking up in the middle of the night; I came instantly awake, heart racing and jittery, a chemically induced feeling like caffeine coursing through my body.

"Hello?"

"Dr. Zimmerman's office?"

Even half-asleep with my heart beating like a gerbil, I knew my confusion was rational, and that this was not a dream.  "Pardon?"

"Sorry wrong number."  Click.

Who calls a doctor's office at 4am? 

Then I realized my wife wasn't home yet from dancing at the clubs.  Usually when she goes out, she gets home at two.  I called, texted, no answer.  Her favourite club, Neighbors, is open till four.  I convinced myself to wait another hour or two before getting seriously worried.  Fell asleep with the phone in hand.

Woke up into the blue half-dark.  My room seemed huge.  There was the sound of surf.  Out the sliding glass doors, it sounded like rather than a hot tub, it was the ocean.  Called my wife's cell.  Got a man's voice so heavily accented with spanish that I could barely understand it.  Talking in the background suggested two or three others nearby; my mental image was ruffians, motel room.  My best english translation would be: "we have all her things; you have the money?"

"What are you talking about?"  Bad reply.  Shit.  I felt immediately sick to my stomach scared.  Once before, my wife's cell disappeared in a bar.  When she called it, the obviously drunk woman who answered said she'd rescued the phone after my wife had abandoned it, and that she was holding it hostage for someone better suited to take care of it.

Of course at the time that happened, my wife was standing next to me, yelling into the house cordless handset at the woman who had answered but refused to return her cell phone.  Point:  there are crazy people in the world. 

I tried a different tack, "What do you want?".  Got an answer that I literally could not parse at all, and then the man hung up on me.  I called back and he didn't answer.  Called again, no answer.  So I dialed 911.  I was crying by the time the operator asked me "What's your emergency?"

I told her, my voice high and unnatural, that my wife was out unusually late, and when I tried to call her cell, a man I didn't know had answered and seemed to be in the process of selling the phone and possibly other personal effects to someone else.

And at that moment, two things happened: 1. my wife walked in the door with a couple of friends in tow, laughing and disheveled.  2. my wife was a super skinny blonde whom I had never seen before.

I woke up, relieved.  Just a dream.

Then.  Looked at the clock.  607am.  Checked the driveway.  Nothing.  Texted. Called.  No answer.  Left my best worried-but-not-trying-to-overreact voicemail and went back to bed.  Did not fall asleep.  Called a few more times without leaving messages.  Lay awake.

623am the house phone rang.  My wife had left her phone in the car when she went out and hadn't gotten my texts or voicemail till now.  She would be home in twenty minutes.

Slept again.  I do not remember about what.