Please Hold. Your Life Is Important to Us.
A story of waiting inside a system that never admits you were there.
The voice is always calm.
It never rushes. It never hesitates. It never sounds like it has somewhere else to be.
“Please hold. Your life is important to us.”
The first time I heard those words, I believed them.
I was sitting on the edge of my bed, phone pressed tightly against my ear, watching the afternoon light crawl across the floor. Dust drifted through the air, slow and careless, like it had nowhere else it needed to go.
My landlord’s letter was still open beside me.
The paper had already begun to curl at the edges, as if it, too, were tired.
FINAL NOTICE. PAYMENT REQUIRED WITHIN 24 HOURS.
Below it was the number I had been told to call.
So I called.
Soft music filled the silence. It was gentle, almost kind.
The kind of music meant to reassure you that nothing was wrong.
Every thirty seconds, the voice returned.
“Please continue to hold. Your call is important to us.”
Important enough to wait.
Not important enough to answer.
I stayed very still, afraid that movement might somehow disconnect me. My phone grew warm against my face. My arm began to ache, but I did not lower it.
Outside, someone laughed. A car door slammed. Life continued, loud and certain.
Inside, nothing moved except the light.
Systems like to promise order.
They promise that if you follow the steps, everything will make sense. They give you instructions. They give you numbers. They give you the comfort of sequence.
Press 1.
Press 2.
Press 3.
Each choice feels like progress. Each choice feels like you are getting closer to someone who can help.
But each choice leads only to another voice.
Another instruction.
Another delay.
It feels organized. It feels intentional.
But it does not feel human.
A human would sigh. A human would pause. A human would hear the small crack in your voice when you said, “Hello,” and understand that it meant more than the word itself.
The system heard only silence.
At first, I believed the wait would be short.
I sat upright, alert. I listened carefully, ready to speak the moment someone answered. I had already decided what I would say.
I will pay. I just need more time. Please.
After a while, my shoulders loosened. I leaned back against the wall. I watched the battery in the corner of my screen slip from 62% to 51%.
The music repeated.
After longer still, something inside me began to fold inward.
Maybe I pressed the wrong number.
Maybe I misunderstood the letter.
Maybe this was how it worked.
Thirty seconds of music.
A pause.
The voice.
“Please hold.”
I began to measure time in those pieces.
The strange thing about waiting is how quickly it becomes normal.
My phone slid slightly against my ear when my hand grew damp. I adjusted my grip. I did not dare use speaker mode. I did not trust the distance.
The battery dropped to 39%.
Outside my window, the sky had begun to change. The sharp white afternoon softened into something quieter. Shadows stretched across the pavement like long unanswered questions.
Somewhere, someone was being helped.
Somewhere, someone had already explained their situation and heard another person say, “I understand.”
I wondered what that felt like.
“Your call is important to us.”
The voice said it with perfect confidence.
It never explained why importance felt so much like absence.
Important things do not usually wait this long.
Important things are not left listening to music that has no end.
Important things are not forgotten mid-sentence.
After an hour, my arm began to tremble.
I switched the phone to my other hand. The skin beneath my ear felt hot and tender. I stared at the notice on the bed.
FINAL NOTICE.
The words no longer looked like language. They looked like shapes. Hard, permanent shapes.
The battery reached 21%.
I stopped checking it after that.
I understood, suddenly, that my place in the system existed only as long as the phone remained alive. If the battery died, I would disappear completely. No one would know I had called. No one would know I had waited.
The system would continue without interruption.
There is a moment, after enough waiting, when hope becomes something quieter.
Not gone.
Just thinner.
You stop expecting rescue. You begin to hope only for acknowledgment. A voice. A breath. Proof that you are not speaking into emptiness.
“You are number 12 in the queue.”
The voice said this as if it were good news.
I imagined the eleven people ahead of me. I imagined their lives paused in different rooms. Different cities. Different kinds of fear.
I imagined all of us holding our phones, listening to the same music, believing we were getting closer.
The battery reached 9%.
The room had grown darker. The light on the floor had disappeared completely. My reflection hovered faintly on the black screen around the call timer.
01:42:11
I had never done anything for that long without stopping.
The music continued.
The voice returned.
“Please hold.”
My chest tightened. I tried to breathe quietly, as if the system might hear me and mistake the sound for impatience.
I wondered how many people had hung up. I wondered how many had simply run out of battery.
I wondered how many had been erased.
At 3%, the screen dimmed automatically.
For a moment, I thought the call had ended. My heart lurched. I lifted the phone closer, desperate, protective, as if proximity could preserve it.
The music still played.
The voice still believed I was there.
Then, without warning, there was a click.
Silence.
Not the gentle silence of waiting. Not the silence between pieces of music.
The heavy, finished silence of something that would not return.
The screen was dark.
The battery was empty.
I stared at my reflection, faint and distorted, until it dissappeared completely.
No apology came. No explanation. No record of the hours that had passed.
The system had not failed.
It had continued exactly as it was designed to.
I placed the phone beside the notice on the bed.
Outside, somewhere below my window, the world continued moving forward, untouched by my absence.
I understood then that importance, inside a system like this, was not
something you were given.
It was something you were told while you waited.
And when the waiting ended, there was nothing left to prove you had ever been there at all.
About the Creator
Edward Smith
Health,Relationship & make money coach.Subscibe to my Health Channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkwTqTnKB1Zd2_M55Rxt_bw?sub_confirmation=1 and my Relationship https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCogePtFEB9_2zbhxktRg8JQ?sub_confirmation=1
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