The Phone Rang at 2 a.m.

The phone rang at 2 a.m last night. It was startling, but I did not worry it was one of those horrible calls that you dread -- an urgent family situation, accident, death, etc. But it did make me think of the fragile balance in which all of our lives hang, where one phone call could change everything. It was hard to go back to sleep.
I did recall the horrible nights when I was the first number called for burgular alarms at a number of offices. It most often was false alarms as a result of errors by cleaning crews, though there were a few real break-ins.