FOUND HIS OTHER PHONE HIDDEN UNDER THE PASSENGER CAR SEAT THIS MORNING
My hands were shaking so bad I almost dropped the small black phone onto the garage floor. The cold metal felt instantly foreign and heavy in my palm as I scrolled through it quickly. Pages and pages of messages and calls to someone saved simply as ‘Sarah’. My heart hammered against my ribs like a frantic bird trapped in a cage; this wasn’t an old work contact, the dates were recent, just this morning.
He walked into the garage unexpectedly just as I found a recent picture of them together, standing close and smiling by the lake near his office. “What the hell are you doing with that?” he snapped, his voice suddenly sharp and cutting through the tense silence. I just stood frozen, holding the glowing screen up between us, silent, waiting for the instant, obvious lie I already knew was coming.
He took a step towards me, hand outstretched, trying to grab the phone, but I instinctively pulled back, clutching it tighter. “Sarah? You have a whole other phone dedicated to someone named Sarah? Who *is* Sarah?” My voice was barely a hoarse whisper, but the panic and disbelief felt like a scream trapped inside my head, echoing in the small space. The stale, greasy smell of fast food and old coffee that always lingered in the garage air suddenly felt thick and suffocating, making it hard to breathe.
He finally stopped trying to take it and just looked away, his shoulders slumping forward in defeat. The silence that fell between us then was louder and heavier than any argument we’d ever had, pressing down on me. It confirmed everything I didn’t want to see or believe from the relentless, glowing evidence on that small screen.
Then a new message popped up on *my* phone: “Sarah is waiting for you.”
👇 *Full story continued in the comments…*Then a new message popped up on *my* phone: “Sarah is waiting for you.”
I stared at my own screen, then back at his slumped form. The air crackled with confusion now, replacing the certainty of betrayal. He looked up, his eyes widening as he saw the message on my phone. “What? How…?” His voice was no longer sharp, but laced with a new kind of panic. He snatched the hidden phone from my hand, scrolling furiously through its recent messages. His face paled. “Damn it, I sent that to the wrong phone! It was meant for *you*.”
My mind reeled. “Me? Sarah is waiting for *me*? Who is she? Why do you have a secret phone to talk to her? And that picture… by the lake?” The trapped scream inside me found its way out, raw and shaky.
He ran a hand through his hair, looking utterly defeated, but not in the way I had initially thought. “Okay, okay. Just… calm down. Please. Sarah… Sarah is your therapist.”
The word hung in the air, heavy and unexpected. My therapist? I hadn’t seen a therapist in years, not since… since the panic attacks had become manageable. “My… therapist? What are you talking about?” My hands started shaking again, but this time it wasn’t just fear; it was utter disorientation.
“The shaking,” he said softly, gesturing towards my trembling hands. “The panic, like this morning. It’s been getting worse again, hasn’t it? You haven’t said anything, but I’ve seen it. You almost dropped that phone because you were having an episode right here.” He took a step closer, tentatively. “I called Sarah a few weeks ago. I found her number – the one you used back then. I explained what was happening. She thought maybe just knowing she was available, that someone understood, might help. She suggested short, check-in sessions.”
He looked down at the hidden phone again. “This phone… it was supposed to be for coordinating with her without adding stress to you. You tend to brush things off when I bring them up directly. I met her by the lake yesterday to talk about setting up an appointment for you, a surprise. That picture… she took it on her phone after we finished talking.” He held out the hidden phone, showing me the call log and message history with ‘Sarah’. It wasn’t pages of intimate exchanges, but scheduling details, notes about my recent behavior, and messages like “She seemed really anxious this morning” or “Does 3 pm Tuesday work for a quick chat?”
I sank onto a nearby step, the cold concrete doing little to ground me. The relief that washed over me was so intense it felt like pain, leaving me breathless. But it was tangled with a profound sense of shame and confusion. He had gone behind my back, kept secrets, set up a whole separate communication channel… all because he was worried about me.
He sat down beside me, not touching me, but his presence was a solid anchor. “I handled it badly,” he admitted, his voice rough. “Terribly, obviously. I should have just talked to you, but I was scared. Scared you’d shut down, that you wouldn’t get the help you needed. I just wanted… I wanted to fix it for you.”
The garage air still smelled of stale coffee and fast food, but it didn’t feel suffocating anymore. It just felt real. I looked at him, at the worry etched on his face, the genuine regret in his eyes. He hadn’t been planning an escape; he had been planning an intervention, albeit a misguided and secretive one. There was a long, heavy silence again, different from the last one. This one wasn’t filled with accusation, but with the weight of unspoken fears and flawed intentions.
“Sarah is waiting for you,” he repeated softly, glancing at my phone again. “She has a slot open this afternoon. She said just text back if you want to come.”
My hand trembled as I reached for my phone. The small screen glowed, showing the message from my old therapist, a lifeline I hadn’t known I needed, orchestrated by the man I had just minutes ago condemned in my heart. It wasn’t a happy ending, not neatly tied up with apologies and hugs. It was just… complicated. But for the first time all morning, I felt a flicker of something other than panic. I felt the possibility of air, of breathing again. And that, for now, felt like enough of a start.