A Wrong Number

On Thursday night I got a call from my brother to inform me that my mother was in the emergency room awaiting admission to the hospital (nothing life-threatening, thankfully). He had received a call from one of my mother's friends in Florida, and he gave me the hospital's phone number that she had given him. I called the number the following afternoon, and I guess I wasn't listening closely to how the receptionist answered. I said, "I believe my mother was admitted there last night; can you check on that?" The woman replied, "Sir, this is an animal hospital! But I'm sorry to hear about your mother."

So I looked up the number of University Hospital, in Tamarac. The number was one digit away from that of the Sadowski Animal Hospital--721-2200 vs. 721-2100. How could that have happened? An animal hospital and a human hospital, and only a one-digit difference in the phone numbers. What are the odds? Does chance have a devilish sense of humor?