On a Monday morning, while Tony was in the bathroom taking his shower, he heard his wife, Christabel, talking in a loud voice from the room, "Honey, your phone has been ringing endlessly."
"Okay, check the name and tell me who's calling," Tony replied from the bathroom.
The phone had stopped ringing, so the wife picked up the phone and wanted to unlock it to see who called(the phone was set in a way that it doesn't display calls on the home screen), but she remembered that she doesn't know the password to the phone, so she waited for the phone to start ringing again.
"Honey, who was calling?" Tony requested again from the bathroom
"I am yet to... to..." She was about to respond to her husband when the phone began to ring again. "It's a private number; the name is hidden," she said aloud to him.
"Private number? Leave it there. I don't pick private numbers," he said as he walked out of the bathroom with a towel rubbing his wet body.
"Where's the phone?" He asked after he gazed at the bed and didn't see the phone.
Christabel replied from the kitchen, "It's either on top of the bed or table, check the two."
He saw the phone on top of the table, unlocked it, and was surprised by the "9 missed calls" that welcomed him on the screen.
He hissed and flung the phone on the bed as he continued preparing for work.
Just within a minute, the phone began to ring again. He reached out to the phone and saw "private number" again as the caller.
"Who's this disturbing my life this early morning?" he frustratedly said.
"Don't you think you should answer the call? You don't know who's calling; it might be someone in danger," Christabel suggested.
"No way; anyone calling me with hidden number must be up to something, and I don't want to give in. You know my position in my workplace," Tony said as he walked away from the phone still ringing.
The call kept coming in, and there's no way he could restrict the call because it's a private number, and because of the disturbing call, he can't turn off his phone or put it on air flight mode. He just left it ringing.
As he was taking his breakfast in the dining room, Christabel walked up to him with the phone ringing, saying, "Honey, please answer this call. Please, I beg you."
He raised his head, looked at the wife's face and saw how concerned she was. He dropped the cup of coffee in his hand and collected the phone from the wife. He clicked on answer, and a familiar feminine voice rushed him.
"Toney, why have you not been picking up my calls? I've called you up to 30 times. You've been avoiding my....?"
"Mama! Why are you calling with a private number?" He interrupted the voice immediately after recognising that it was her mother who had been calling.
"Private number? I didn't know. Maybe these children mistakingly did that to my phone and I didn't notice. Anyways, please find your way home today before evening; your dad is in the hospital. He felt a terrible headache in the night, and we thought it was something he could bear, but it became worse around 6 a.m." Mrs Ammeh said on the phone.
"Okay, Mama, in fact, I'm coming home right away." He hung up.
Christabel was beside him and she heard what was discussed because the phone was put on loud speaker, and she added, after a deep sigh, "Thank God you listened to me and answered the call"
"Yeah, thank you for the persuasion."
Tony hurriedly emptied the cup of coffee, went inside, collected his car keys, kissed his wife and drove off for village, which was a one-hour drive. Along the way, he called his staff in the office to take care of things.
He got to the village and drove directly to the hospital address his mom told him.
On getting there, he met his dad, who had already recovered, and he was relieved big time. He Hugged his dad, "Papa, I'm so excited you're fine"
"We give glory to God, thank you for coming also" His dad, Mr Ammeh joyfully reciprocated.
"So what actually happened?" He asked his mom, Mrs. Ammeh.
"Just like I told you on the phone, he had..." As she was talking, she got interrupted by Tony, "Mama, give me your phone before you continue." He stretched his hands to get his mom's phone, which she brought out and placed on his hand.
"Okay, continue," he said to the mom as he glanced through the phone and removed the private call setting that was set on the phone.
After listening to her mom's long story, he returned her phone to her and warned her not to allow children to get access to her phone again.
They paid the hospital bills and drove home.
There was still time but Tony decided to spend a night with his parents, so he called Christabel to inform her about the situation and she was glad to hear that her in-law was healthy.