Father hears son's trauma 1,200 miles away

One day I got a phone call from my girlfriend. Her dog had bit her on the mouth, and she was at the hospital. With difficulty, in a distorted voice, she described the disfiguring, bloody injury to her lips. I was shocked and saddened. I drove to the hospital and then comforted her while a plastic surgeon repaired her mangled lips. The injury was terrible, but fortunately the surgeon was able to repair most of the damage while I sat next to my girlfriend's stretcher in the emergency room. This was many years ago, and I recall that the following coincidence happened on the same day, either as I was about to leave for the hospital, or after I returned home: My phone rang; I answered, and my father, 1,200 miles away, was on the line. He immediately asked me if I was all right. I told him I was fine, and I did not mention my girlfriend's injury. Again he asked me, with a worried tone in his voice, if everything was all right, and I said yes. I pretended things were fine, because I did not want to talk about what had just happened to my girlfriend. (Such was the nature of my relationship with my father.) Then I asked my father why he was so concerned. He told me that he had just then heard my voice shouting, "Dad!" He said it was distinctly my voice very urgently shouting to him that one word, "Dad!" He said it sounded as if I needed him and something was wrong. My father said he called me immediately after he heard my voice. As I have said, this occurred either right after my girlfriend had told me what had happened to her, or right after I had seen her at the hospital with her bloody lips. I do not remember which, but that detail seems not to detract from this astounding coincidence. At no other time in my life did my father ever indicate to me that he had heard my voice in his mind, nor experienced any such thing. His phone call to me occurred out of the blue, at an odd time, all by itself for no reason, but it coincided exactly with the trauma I was feeling about my girlfriend's injury. Of note is the fact that my parents fought violently when I was a boy, and I witnessed my father harming my mother. There was blood, and I was traumatized. At those times, I would shout for my father to stop hurting my mother. My girlfriend's bloody injury gave me a sick feeling similar to what I felt when I saw my mother get hurt.