HER MOTHER CALLED two days before the flight, in the middle of the night. She didn’t hear the phone ring. When she woke up to go to the bathroom, she happened to see the text message.

“I took Dad to the hospital. Chest pain.”

Tamara dialed her mother’s number in a panic. She called again and again until her mother sent her another text saying they were in the examination room and she’d call her later.

“I’m coming,” Tamara wrote her, to which her mother replied that it was a shame to cut her trip short especially for them, and promised to update her when they knew more. Without reading the rest of the message, Tamara started picking up the clothes scattered around the apartment. Michael woke up and found her sitting on the floor, trying to stuff another sweater into her bag.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

She pointed at her phone and he read the texts, sat down beside her, and wrapped his arms around her in a tight embrace.

“Just don’t forget you’re still in Germany,” he said while stroking her hair. “I’ll find you the earliest flight. You’ll be there by tomorrow afternoon. Maybe even before.”

Her body recoiled from him. She leaned back and considered him, certain he was joking.

“Did you really just say that?” she asked, furious at his tormented expression, as if he had hijacked her pain.

“How are you going to explain to your mother that it only took you an hour to get to Ichilov?” he said. “I know it’s a tough situation, but we have to think straight.”

She pushed him off her, then picked up the shirt he was sitting on.

“The last thing I care about right now is your fucking Germany,” she yelled, and the more she thought about what he had said, the more absurd it seemed. “Never in my life have I thought a person could be so detached.” She got up and started pacing the room.

“You knew what you were getting into,” he mumbled. “It could burn me too, don’t you get it?”

She wanted to kill him. “What’s wrong with you?” she screamed at him. “Don’t you understand my father is dying?”

He didn’t answer, and she had nothing more to say. She looked at him again, saw him withdrawing into himself, fixing his eyes on the floor, and couldn’t understand what she was still doing there.

“I’ll call you a taxi,” he said without looking at her. He tried to dial, but his hand was shaking badly.

“No need,” she announced and started walking toward the door. Slowly.

“I hope you come back.”

Once outside the apartment she called a taxi herself. Waiting for its arrival, she got another text from her mother: “Gallstones. He’ll be fine. Sorry for making you worry. Good night, have fun.”