The Emergency Contact Is Always Me
A woman who avoids responsibility receives emergency calls about strangers who have all named her as their contact.
ImagineYourBook writes a fresh draft from this idea.
How it begins
The hospital asked Cora whether she was family.
"No."
"You're listed as the emergency contact."
"Then the form is wrong."
The woman on the phone paused. Cora knew that pause. She used it herself when a customer insisted the evidence must be mistaken because it was inconvenient.
"Your name is Cora Lin?"
"Yes."
"And this is your number?"
"Obviously."
The word sounded cruel after she said it.
Across her desk lay six insurance claims, a cooling coffee and an invitation to a birthday party she had not answered. She had arranged her life so that nobody depended on her for anything that could happen after office hours.
"Is he all right?" she asked.
"He's awake. He asked us to thank you for the yellow door."
Cora looked at her office door.
Grey.
"I don't know what that means."
"He said you would."
She went to the hospital because explaining the mistake over the phone had become more complicated than correcting it in person.
The patient was an elderly man with a folded newspaper beside his bed. He smiled when she entered.
"You came."
"I think we've been confused with somebody else."
He shook his head.
"Not you. You were very clear about that."
A staff member showed Cora the contact form.
Her name. Her number. Her signature, including the small unfinished loop she made when she was tired.
The form was dated forty-two years ago.
Five years before she was born.
She touched the edge of the paper.
"Who gave you this?"
The old man's smile faded.
"The people at the station."
"What station?"
He looked past her toward the window.
For a moment she thought he had forgotten the question. Then he began to cry with the quiet embarrassment of somebody who had expected gratitude to be enough.
"The one that falls," he said.
Cora's phone vibrated.
Another unfamiliar number.
She answered before the second ring.
This time, when the voice asked whether she was family, she said, "Tell me who needs help."
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Outline and characters
- Cora receives an emergency call about a stranger who listed her as family.
- Further calls reveal old forms with her current number and signature.
- Samir traces the records to a future volunteer response exercise.
- They identify a transit failure linking the strangers.
- Cora tries to delete her details but the calls move to people less prepared.
- A contractor is using future records to conceal present safety failures.
- Cora accepts a role in the rescue without accepting sole responsibility.
- She and Samir distribute the warnings through a verified local network.
- The coordinated response prevents mass harm and preserves evidence of the fraud.
- Cora chooses whom to name as her own emergency contact.
Characters
- Cora Lin, 37. A claims auditor who has avoided becoming anyone's emergency contact
- Samir Keel, 44. A rescue coordinator whose records contain an impossible volunteer roster
Series possibilities
- Cora receives a contact form signed by a rescue team that no longer exists.
