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One time in your life, you have the experience of being unable to get hold of someone you love, wherein it happens that in fact they *have* dropped off the face of the earth for a bad reason... and you learn about this after 36 hours or so, and have to track them down to the hospital.
Forever after -- as in ten and a half years later -- anytime you are unexpectedly unable to reach a loved one for the better part of a day, you cannot shake an uneasy feeling that Something Has Gone Terribly Wrong, and that, for reasons of sudden emotional trauma, they either are purposely refusing to pick up the phone to speak to you or have taken themselves off and disappeared altogether.
So when the loved one of today finally does return your phonecall, having been out on a perfectly mundane errand, you are privately rather embarrassed, but also relieved that your gut-level fears have been proven wrong once again.
(Then you wonder what this pattern says more about: your own deep neuroses, or the actual emotional instability of the people you come to love.)
Forever after -- as in ten and a half years later -- anytime you are unexpectedly unable to reach a loved one for the better part of a day, you cannot shake an uneasy feeling that Something Has Gone Terribly Wrong, and that, for reasons of sudden emotional trauma, they either are purposely refusing to pick up the phone to speak to you or have taken themselves off and disappeared altogether.
So when the loved one of today finally does return your phonecall, having been out on a perfectly mundane errand, you are privately rather embarrassed, but also relieved that your gut-level fears have been proven wrong once again.
(Then you wonder what this pattern says more about: your own deep neuroses, or the actual emotional instability of the people you come to love.)