The Night Telephone E-Book

Greta Gorsuch

• Herausgeber: Gemma Open Door for Literacy
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 58

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

Dr. Tarak Kapoor cannot sleep. He has just taken a job as a telemedicine doctor in Texas. Garnet is two days and five airports away from his home in Mumbai. Tarak is so tired, but his body thinks it's lunchtime in India. By 2:30 a.m. he is wandering the empty streets. To his surprise, he finds a brightly lit pay telephone next to a set of broken traffic lights. Even though it's the middle of the night, people drive up one by one and make calls. Why on earth are they here at this hour? Who are they calling? The mystery deepens when Tarak retraces his steps the next day. All he finds is an empty lot covered with dirt and trash. Perhaps he has made a mistake. His jet lag is pretty bad. But when he returns that night, the phone booth is back in its spot, glowing brightly. Tarak picks up his courage when an old man stops his car to make a call. Tarak questions him about the phone. The man asks, "Is there someone you want to call?" and drives away into the empty night. As Tarak looks at the phone, it begins to ring. Will he answer the night telephone?

Leseprobe

Greta Gorsuch

THE NIGHT TELEPHONE

Greta Gorsuch has taught ESL/EFL and applied linguistics for more than thirty years in Japan, Vietnam, and the United States. Greta’s work has appeared in journals such as System, Reading in a Foreign Language, Language Teaching, Language Teaching Research, and TESL-EJ. Her books in the Gemma Open Door Series include The Cell Phone Lot, Key City on the River, Post Office on the Tokaido,and Queen Serene. Greta lives in beautiful wide West Texas and goes camping whenever she can.

First published by Gemma in 2021.

Gemma230 Commercial StreetBoston MA 02109 USA

www.gemmamedia.org

©2021 by Greta Gorsuch

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

Printed in the United States of America

978-1-936846-93-1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Gorsuch, Greta, author. 

Title: The night telephone / Greta Gorsuch. 

Description: Boston, MA : Gemma, 2021. | Series: Gemma open door

Identifiers: LCCN 2021018069 (print) | LCCN 2021018070 (ebook) | ISBN

   9781936846931 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9781936846948 (ebook) 

Classification: LCC PS3607.O77 N55 2021  (print) | LCC PS3607.O77  (ebook)

   | DDC 813/.6--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021018069

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021018070

Cover by Laura Shaw Design

Gemma’s Open Doors provide fresh stories, new ideas, and essential resources for young people and adults as they embrace the power of reading and the written word.

Thanks to Mr. Harsh S.

Open Door

Chapter One

It was 2:00 a.m. Dr. Tarak Kapoor was wide awake. He had arrived at the Garnet, Texas, airport five days ago. He should be on Texas time by now. He should be sleeping better. But he wasn’t. He was still on India time. His brain thought it was lunchtime in Mumbai. His body thought it was the middle of the day. He thought of his favorite place to eat lunch in Mumbai, in his old life. It was a small park outside the big, busy hospital where he worked. He would buy a bowl of rice and curry from a food truck outside the park. The cook would say hello. Then he would ask, in Hindi, “How many people stayed with us today?” Tarak would smile and say some number. It might be five. It might be twelve. There was always some number.

Tarak was a doctor at the Mumbai Royal Hospital. He took care of very sick people. He saved a lot of them. But some of them died, no matter what Tarak did. The food truck cook knew this. So when the cook asked, “How many people stayed with us today?” he really was asking how many people were alive under Tarak’s care. The cook was trying to be positive. Tarak would then pay the man for his curry. He would find a shady spot and sit down to eat. The busy road outside the park seemed to disappear. Tarak could not hear the trucks and cars and motorbikes. He didn’t hear their beep! beep! beep! horns. He only heard the leaves on the trees moving. He ate slowly and enjoyed the spicy, rich curry.

Now, Tarak was thousands of miles away. In his dark room, Tarak turned over and closed his eyes. Then he opened them again. He turned on his other side. He kicked his blankets off. He tried to fall asleep. After another ten minutes he gave up. His neck hurt. His shoulders hurt. He got out of bed. All of that thinking about the curry was making him hungry. At 2:00 a.m.? Really? Hungry?

He walked through his apartment. There was a bedroom and a large living room/kitchen sort of thing. In the kitchen, he felt his way to the refrigerator. He opened it. The bright light inside came on. Tarak blinked and rubbed his eyes. All he could see in the refrigerator was a banana and some milk. It would have to do. He took out the banana. He found a plastic cup and poured himself some milk. He sat down on the new carpet of his apartment and ate his snack.

His apartment was not very dark, he thought. His big front window now seemed almost bright. All around his apartment complex there were outdoor lights that made an orange glow. It looked so different from Mumbai. Mumbai was bright at night, too. But every building had different lights. Some were very bright and white. Others were dull and yellow.

Tarak’s apartment complex in Garnet was new and large. There was a fence all around it. The six parking lots were full of cars. Tarak didn’t have a car. He would have to do something about that soon. He needed to drive so he could buy food. It turned out his apartment complex was two miles from a food store. He couldn’t even get to his bank unless he wanted to walk quite far.

Tarak sighed. He had so much to do. He had so many new things to get used to. He had never guessed America would be like this. He really wanted to sleep. But it was clear he would not. He could lay in bed all night, and he would still be in India, where it was lunchtime.

Tarak decided to go out for a walk. Why not? He knew there was a major street not far away. He thought he knew how to get there and back. He put on his clothes and shoes. He put his key in his pocket. Then he walked out of his apartment. He found his way to the big front gate. The heavy thing swung shut behind him. Now he was on the street. After a few minutes’ walk, he was in the cool darkness of Garnet on a summer night.

Chapter Two

Tarak had an idea where to go. He went along a narrow street with houses and a few parked cars. There were trees, bigger than the ones at Tarak’s apartment complex. The neighborhood seemed older. Some of the houses were very small. They were single family homes, not apartments. To Tarak’s surprise, he could see lights on in a few of the houses. Other people were awake, too. Tarak wondered why. It was 2:30 a.m. He was not the only one who could not sleep.

Some dogs barked as Tarak passed. In the distance, he could hear sirens from a fire truck, or a police car. Even farther in the distance he heard a low sound, like a very large engine. Then he heard a long, long blast from a horn. Tarak smiled. He had it. It was a train. Tarak was hearing a train, far away somewhere in Garnet. It was just like India, only the American train horn sounded lower and longer. He kept walking in the cool darkness. Just a few blocks ahead he saw Thirty-Fourth Street. At least he thought it was Thirty-Fourth Street.