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Bearing Witness

Tag: mental health

  • What I’ve Learned in Five Years as a 911 Operator

    Alex Richardson

    Today marks five years at this job. I was 18 years old when I started, and to say this work fundamentally changed my brain would be an understatement.

    My first lesson came quickly: you can’t save everyone. It was my first night taking calls when there was a mass shooting. There were multiple victims spread throughout an apartment complex, one of them outside my caller’s patio door, begging him for help. Shots were still ringing out, so I advised him to stay inside his apartment, as it was unsafe to render aid. This lesson has repeated itself many times since. I’ve told a mother not to enter a burning house to save her son, and I’ve listened to a caller describe watching his neighbor be electrocuted to death after stepping into a puddle of water with live wires.

    Not every call is entirely hopeless, and I think that’s what keeps me sane. The situation may be traumatic regardless, but I still have the power not to make it worse. Sometimes, at the end of a call, I take a moment to tell the caller they did a good job and remind them to take care of themselves. Other times, especially when children are involved, I help them remove themselves from a situation they shouldn’t have to be in. I’ve also learned the importance of remaining respectful. Even when I can’t change the outcome, I can still choose how I treat the person on the other end of the line.

    I’ve learned that you never really know what someone is going through. Some people are verbally abusive for seemingly no reason, but there have been plenty of times when I’ve remained calm and kind despite being insulted, only for the caller to eventually apologize and tell me what they’ve been dealing with. Most of the time, I don’t get an apology, and I may never know what was going on in that person’s life. Still, I hope my kindness made a difference, even if I never got to see it.

    I’ve also learned to appreciate the mundane, both inside and outside of work. At work, I enjoy the simple calls, whether that means directing someone to the animal shelter’s website to help them find their dog or answering a kid’s prank call. There’s something comforting about being reminded that not every problem is a tragedy and not every call ends with someone having the worst day of their life. Outside of work, I’ve come to appreciate the repetitiveness of everyday life for much the same reason. There’s comfort in knowing that, despite everything I hear and everything I carry home with me, the world keeps turning. My routines return. The ordinary things are still there. Eventually, I feel like myself again.

    Of course, not everything returns to the way it was. In some ways, I don’t think it ever will. I don’t carry the same sadness I did after the worst call of my career, but I do have a more negative view of the world than I did five years ago. One of the hardest things to accept is that not everything has meaning or a higher purpose. Sometimes, there is no greater lesson to be learned from something terrible. Sometimes people just suck.

    The first time I was sent home after a call it was because a father repeatedly shot his wife in front of their two young children before turning the gun on himself when police arrived. I heard every shot. That night, I drove for two hours, and the only time I felt any peace was when I accepted that there might be no meaning to what had happened. That the world can be a dark, awful place sometimes, and that there may be no explanation that makes it any less so. I still get nauseous when I think about that call.

    But I don’t think that means nothing has meaning.

    I’ve had calls that have reminded me why I do this job, too. I’ve written before about believing that certain calls find their way to certain people, and how trusting my gut has resulted in some pretty incredible saves. I get called a “shit magnet” at work because of how many bad calls I receive. Maybe it’s just bad luck, or maybe there’s no reason for it at all. But I choose to believe that, sometimes, I’m the right person to take a particular call. Maybe the things I’ve experienced have made me better equipped to help someone going through something similar. I hope I am, at least.

    Five years ago, I was 18 years old and had no idea what this job would ask of me, or how much of it I would carry with me. I’m still learning how to make sense of what I hear, what I can change, and what I have to accept. I don’t think there’s a final lesson to take away from this job, but I’m always learning, and that may be the most important lesson of all.

  • Not For Everyone

    Alex Richardson

    Sometimes at work I will have an observer sit with me for an hour or two so they can learn how 911 works. I take calls, explain how they get dispatched, how our computer programs work, and answer whatever questions they have. They all have different reasons, but the one I remember most was a woman considering applying for the job.

    I got a lot of normal calls with her—cold reports, reckless drivers, hang ups, the usual. Then we got a call from someone witnessing an assault. Those calls aren’t out of the ordinary, but every so often they become something bigger. In this case, our caller watched a woman be strangled to death on the hood of her car. She updated us the entire time, from the moment the suspect put his hands around her neck to the moment she fell unconscious and stopped breathing. When the call ended, the observer looked at me and said, “I’ve heard enough.”

    Then she stood up and walked out of the room.

    I never saw her again.

    It’s moments like those that put this job into perspective. Or when I tell someone what I do and they fall silent because they don’t know what to say. On the other hand, there are the people who ask, “What’s the worst call you’ve ever taken?” They don’t realize it’s actually a tie. I never know whether to choose the call where I listened to someone being sexually assaulted with a broken glass bottle or the one where a fourteen-year-old girl found her mother hanging in the garage. They don’t know I took both of those calls in the same shift.

    Once, at a party, I made a joke about a bad call. Someone asked what happened, and I asked if he was sure he wanted to know. He said yes. I checked with the rest of the group too. They all agreed.

    So I told them about the little girl who found her brother stabbed to death.

    The group went quiet. The person sitting next to me started tearing up and tried to hide it.

    I was still new then. That was when I learned it’s better to keep those stories to myself.

    It gets easier over time, but sometimes I wonder if I’ve lost part of my humanity. How many times can you listen to someone get shot before it stops feeling shocking? For me, I think it was three.

    Sometimes I forget calls I feel like I should remember. Most of the calls I’ve been subpoenaed for are ones I barely recall. I once sat in a courtroom while a recording from one of my domestic violence calls played. It was an open line that lasted nearly twenty minutes, the victim screaming and crying the entire time. People in the courtroom looked uncomfortable listening to it.

    They didn’t know that when I originally took the call, I used the opportunity to eat lunch at my desk because it was the first quiet moment I’d had all shift.

    I think about the woman who got up and left after that strangulation call. I don’t blame her.

    Somewhere between my first day and now, I learned how to listen to things most people never forget. I still haven’t decided whether that’s resilience, burnout, or or something in between. Maybe it’s just survival.

  • A stranger I still think about

    Alex Richardson

    Talking someone down from suicide is one of the most personal calls you can get. It’s rare to know your callers on such a deep, vulnerable level, but when someone believes you may be the last person they ever speak to, they tend to tell you everything. Often, building rapport means being willing to be vulnerable yourself.

    One call I’ll never forget was from a fellow trans person. She was in crisis after realizing she was trans and knowing her family would not be accepting.

    The call initially came in to my trainee, who was struggling to build a connection with her. I felt a knot in my stomach and asked my trainee if she wanted to take a risk. I suggested asking the caller whether she’d be open to speaking with a coworker who might better understand her situation. She agreed.

    We flipped the switch on the headset splitter so the caller could hear me. I introduced myself and told her that I was a trans man.

    I told her about my journey. The confusion. The fear. I shared how, in the end, I was glad I’d persevered, that I got to live honestly. I spoke about the community I’d found, the relief of being gendered correctly for the first time, finding clothes that finally felt right, and the moment I looked in the mirror and recognized myself. I talked about my family’s journey toward acceptance, and how it hadn’t been simple or immediate.

    We stayed on the phone for an hour. By the end of it, it felt less like a crisis call and more like a conversation between friends.

    She thanked me and said she was still scared, but that she also felt something else. Excitement. Hope. That she might finally be able to live authentically. My trainee and I were both tearing up.

    I still think about her. I hope she stayed alive long enough to experience the things she was so excited for.