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Bearing Witness

Tag: trauma

  • 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.

  • Healing one trauma with another

    Alex Richardson

    The first time it happened, it was a little girl who had found her brother stabbed to death.

    She called because no one else in the house spoke English. Her little voice was so panicked. She kept telling me there was a lot of blood, that he was unconscious, that he wasn’t breathing. When I asked what happened, the only detail she could give was that his face was unrecognizable.

    I didn’t know he was beyond help. I only knew what my screen told me to do next.

    I tried to get her to do CPR. I tried again. I tried to get another family member on the phone. I tried to slow her down. She was too scared. Her screams filled the line. Nothing I said was reaching her anymore. We were both helpless.

    After the call ended, I replayed it over and over. Not the screaming. Not the blood. The decision.

    I wished I had told her to go outside.

    It goes against policy. You’re supposed to keep the caller with the patient. You’re supposed to keep trying until they refuse. But she was a child. She had already seen more than she ever should have. I knew, even then, that following the rules wasn’t the same as helping her.

    That regret stayed with me longer than the call itself.

    Years later, it happened again.

    Another child. Another Spanish speaking household. This time she had found both of her siblings dead. Fentanyl.

    This time, I knew what I was dealing with. 

    I got her mom doing compressions on one sibling. I got her dad doing compressions on the other. Once I knew hands were moving and help was coming, I made a different choice.

    I told her to go outside.

    I told her to flag down the fire department. To watch for them. To tell me when she heard the sirens. I stayed with her while she waited. She was still scared. It was still horrible. None of that changed.

    But when the call ended, something inside me was quieter.

    It didn’t fix the first call. It didn’t make the second one less traumatic. But it healed something small and specific. The part of me that believed I had failed that little girl years ago. The part that wished I had told her to go outside.

    Sometimes healing doesn’t come from peace or time or closure. Sometimes it comes from being given another chance to do the thing you wish you had done before.

  • You still have to do the laundry 02/14/23

    Alex Richardson

    I wrote the following piece in the aftermath of what was, at the time, the most traumatic call of my career

    ____________________________

    One of the most grounding things after dealing with a traumatic event is the mundanity of the everyday routine that follows. It often feels like the world stops moving, that you cannot possibly ever move on from what happened, but the endless cycle of everyday life does not stop for anyone. There will still be laundry when you get home and dirty dishes in the sink. 

    It’s easy to get overwhelmed, but I’ve found that these tasks can become a source of comfort. Knowing that one day, you will return to how you were. You will fall back into the same routines and you will feel happy again. Your future self will look back on you and feel proud for persevering through it all. 

    Life is unforgiving and cruel. It’s necessary to allow yourself to feel negative emotions when you need to. However, no matter how bad it gets, it is important to still seek out the beauty in this world. Because like routine, it does not cease either. 

  • The first call I never forgot

    Alex Richardson

    I started as a 911 operator when I was 18 years old.

    I understood going into the job that I would be exposed to trauma. However, it was nothing like I had imagined.

    Before I had even graduated, I took an active shooting call while on one of my four hour observations. During academy, we were required to take calls for one hour at a time to ease into the job before starting OJT, when we would be taking calls for ten hours a day.

    During that single hour, there was a shooting at one of my city’s apartment complexes. One of the victims had been shot just outside my caller’s balcony. He was still alive and begging my caller to help him. I advised them not to. There was still an active shooter, and it was not safe to go outside while shots were continuing to be fired. He died.

    I learned quickly that this job would often place me in the position of listening, not saving.

    Within my second week of taking calls, I received one on our animal protection line. The man had blocked his number before calling. He told me he was in a hotel with a litter of puppies and said I needed to get a female animal protection officer on the line with him. If I didn’t, he said he would kill the puppies.

    I kept my voice flat. I knew the call was likely sexually motivated, and that my fear was part of it. I refused to give him that.

    I tried to explain multiple times that I could not transfer him directly to a female officer and that I would need to arrange for one to call him back. We went back and forth for several minutes before he gave up. He said it again. This time, it wasn’t a warning. He was going to kill the puppies.

    He placed his phone speaker next to them. I listened to their small whines and cries.

    Then the line disconnected.

    The wall I had built dropped immediately. I turned to my trainer, who had been in the job for five years. Her expression said everything. She asked if I was okay and told me it was one of the worst calls she had ever heard.

    I was understandably upset, but I knew I needed to finish processing the call. I informed my supervisor and continued with the rest of my shift. Nothing ever came of it. Because he had blocked his number and never provided the hotel address, we were unable to track him down.

    To this day, I still struggle most with the calls where there is nothing I can do but listen.