She was an all right girlfriend, seemed to love me. Which was cool. No complaint with that. For the most part, I tolerated her. Wish it could be more. After six months, should be more, I guess. Wasn’t though.
Her shoulder length blonde hair looked cute when she wore it pulled back in a tight ponytail--as she wore it tonight. Her bright, blue eyes always looked happy. Can’t think of a better word. They Sparkled? They shined? The girl was twenty-seven. Never married. Still thought life was some peach, a glorified bed of roses, and she acted as if she’d just seductively wait in it for her knight to show up and validate some fabled fairytale story of her life.
Nearly impossible at times not to grab and shake her by the shoulders, and yell, “Wake the fuck up!”
“Got your tea.” I set the cup down in front of her.
I kissed the top of her head and sat down next to her.
“Thank you,” she said. I guess I liked the way she smiled, too. Coupled with those eyes, yeah, I’d say she was very attractive. Think what I hated most was talking to her on the phone. Took a while to get her to understand that. I had no problem texting and shit. I just didn’t want to talk. It’s a simple concept. Women just seem flustered by it. Thing was, I was single more than in a relationship since my divorce. So maybe it was me. Don’t know if that’s a question though. Might be more of a statement. Maybe it was me.
I pulled the lid off my coffee. I picked up the sugar dispenser and dumped more into my cup, took a sip and smacked my lips. “That’s good.”
“See the schedule?”
“Phones.”
“Me, too,” she said. “We’re in different pods, though.”
“On purpose, no doubt,” I shrugged. We were used to it. Could make an unbearable night more bearable working in pods where you didn’t absolutely hate the people around you. See, that might improve morale, cause employees to feel valued. Just another way management was fucking with you. Everyone knew Allison and I were together. Some thought it was cool. Some simply displayed childish forms of jealousy. Dating co-workers wasn’t prohibited as much as it was frowned upon. Thing was, we spent long, often difficult hours together. Relationships formed. Couldn’t really be helped. Lot of people here were married. Many more dated, and it ended horribly. And, of course, there’s the large handful of married (to non-employees) who dated peers, or just slept with them. I couldn’t keep all the webs that linked everyone to everyone else straight. At some point, it just felt like Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, anyway. I mean, who didn’t love Bacon?
I needed another cigarette or two. Allison didn’t smoke. Like talking on the phone, it took her a few weeks to learn not to give me shit about smoking. I smoked. She knew it when she met me. Magazines might give tips about how to change your man, but you know what? We don’t change.
“I’ll be back,” I said, standing up. She smiled. Said nothing. Yeah, Allison was an all right girlfriend. I gave her a wink. “Did you see if we at least have breaks together or anything?”
“I’ll check,” she said.
“I got it. Look on my way out,” I said.
Chapter Four
The floor is set up in pods. About thirty-five people work per shift. There are four different telecommunication pods, with four to five phone stations in each, a fire and ambulance dispatch pod with six stations, and lastly, two police dispatch pods for nine employees. There are people for breaks and lunch reliefs, and in the center of it all, three to four supervisors per shift oversee the night.
I logged on to the three terminals at my station, and plugged in my headset-jack. We’re several calls in queue.
Allison stopped at the pod. “Putting me on the police side,” she said.
“Lucky you.” She sauntered away. I shook my head. Lucky her.
I made it through a handful of calls and sipped some water before answering the next.
“Nine-one-one Center,” I said.
“Send an ambulance, please. Send an ambulance.” It’s a female voice.
I checked the left monitor. A landline. I have a name, address, and the number she’s calling from. I still have to ask and verify. “What’s your address, ma’am?”
“No,” she yells. “No! Ah, God—he, he—”
“Ma’am, what is your address?” I filled out the electronic job template on the center monitor and brought the caller’s information over with a keystroke. I heard crying, her sucking in gasps, and moaning. “Ma’am, I need your address.”
It’s the nature of the job. Night after night. No one ever knows where they are. If they do, I can rarely understand a word being said—what with crappy cell phone companies, and piss-poor annunciation. Landline calls were a bonus. There were far less of those calls, as people made cells their primary. I didn’t have a home phone.
“He’s sick. I mean, like really sick.” I think she laughed. One of those nervous, anxious laughs. Not like something was funny, but like she was close to losing it.
“Where are you, ma’am?”
“He told me his toe itched. That it was itchy. And then, he, I—he—with the knife, he just cut it off.”
“The toe?” I asked. I cocked my head to one side, and pressed a finger to my ear. Nothing should surprise me, but I thought, I can’t be hearing this right.
“Where is the knife now?”
I’m closing in on two minutes since the start of the call. With no confirmed address, I’ll need a supervisor’s involvement. I hate that.
“Ma’am—”
She’d hung up.
I clicked on a button to dial her number. On the template I typed: F (for female) STATES M (for male) CUT OFF HIS TOE—M POSS (for possible) INTOX—CLR H/U (for caller hung up). It’s all about short cuts and abbreviations. Get the job in, and the responders en route.
I transferred the address information I did have to the right-hand monitor, used for mapping.
On the third ring back, someone answered.
“This is nine-one-one. We were disconnected,” I said.
Open line. Screaming in the background. Sounded like things being knocked over. Grunts, more groans.
A stifled scream?
I type: OPEN LINE ON C/B—HEAR SCREAMING, AND POSS STRUGGLE.
I had enough. I entered an event type for domestic dispute, and sent the job to the police dispatchers. I combined it with an ambulance job, who’ll stage in the area until police cleared them in to the scene. If the guy cut off his toe, he was going to need medical attention for sure. For all I knew, by now, the female might as well.
The call disconnected. Dial tone hums.
As always, another call to be answered waited. No need to call the female back a second time. Police had the job. Someone would go, sort things out.
That training I told you about, taught us to move from call to call, not get hung up on what might, or might not be happening with the people involved in the last one. Not always easy to do. But after years employed here, it does become robotically automatic.
“Nine-one-one Center,” I said, and looked up. There’s flat screen TVs everywhere with subtitles, but no sound, and the only thing we’re allowed to watch is news. I’m up to here with reality. News was the last thing I wanted to watch. Not to mention, reports mostly revolved around the H7N9 virus, and its vaccinations.
“Hello, this is nine-one-one,” I said, again.
Open line.
Cell phone, this time. I re-bid the number—an attempt to triangulate the caller’s location. Naturally, it’s one of those cell phones you can get without a contract. They rarely work when doing this—trying to pin down the caller’s location. These cell providers basically provide customers with junk phones at an affordable rate and piggyback off the more reputable service providers’ towers.