The Determining Call
A training class is shown a disturbing phone call.
“I’m going to show you a phone call that will make or break your decision to take this job.”
I looked to my friend Dave beside me who was twitching nervously in his seat. I felt the same exact way as we waited for the dispatcher to play the audio clip. Just sitting here listening to the dispatcher telling her own stories had made me. slightly doubt my decision to come here today, so I was terrified to hear this call. A quick check around the room led me to believe just about everyone else was feeling their anxiety levels rise, too.
The call began with a woman speaking nervously, something clearly distracting her thoughts.
Yeah, uh…this is Ruth uh Price at 3877 —
What’s the problem, ma’am? said the operator, rudely cutting the woman off.
Oh, there’s some guy been um, checking the place out.
How?
Well, he went in the back, I have an apartment in the back, and he said he was looking for a guy, and he comes to my door…and…The caller pauses for a moment, and the room is so quiet that you could hear a pin drop. I still felt fearful for how this call would go, but a feeling of anger at how the operator was acting mangled my emotions into a hot mess. I wanted to not listen to the call, but the strangeness of how it was being handled made me also want to reach through the speakers and yank the receiver out of the operator’s hand to finish the call myself.
And uh… continues the caller. …said he’s looking for an apartment…So I’m real…I-I live alone and I’m an old lady…
Mhmm, the operator responds. I inwardly groan.
And I’m kind of —
The operator cuts her off once more, asking, Where-where is he now, ma’am?
I don’t have no idea.
Screaming suddenly erupts from the speakers, catching everyone completely off guard. Dave and I were so scared that we jumped back, causing our chairs to slide and screech against the floor. The woman’s screams continued to ring out as she screamed for help. I felt her pain in my chest like a heavy burden had suddenly smashed on top of me. Cries for help were mixed within the screams, and they made me wish I could have actually been the operator to answer that call. I wanted to help this woman more than I had ever wanted anything in my entire life.
It felt like we had been listening to those screams for an eternity before the dispatcher in charge of our training turned the audio off. My heart felt like it was about to beat out of my chest and land on the table in front of me.
“Can anybody tell me what was done wrong in that call?” asked the dispatcher, making most of us in the room jump due to the call leaving us on edge. Another quick check around the room told me that everyone was even more unsettled than they were before. If screams like that didn’t rattle you, I would feel inclined to tell you that something might be wrong with you.
The responses to the question came slowly and quietly around the room, but I didn’t join in. I stared blankly at the table in front of me, imagining my beating heart laying on it, feeling the sadness and anger wash over me. I put myself in that woman’s shoes, and imagined the horrors that she had probably gone through. As I heard the dispatcher mention possibilities of the outcome for the caller, the words rape and violently beaten are listed, and I picture the heart on the table still.
I couldn’t say the same for anyone else in the room, especially the ones staying silent like me, but I knew my decision had been made. That call terrified the hell out of me. I was lucky to be here in this room today, and that something that horrible hadn’t happened to me. That woman wasn’t given the same chance, especially with the way the operator barely helped her. I didn’t want to be like that operator. I actually wanted to help prevent things like this from happening, and I would do everything in my power to save people from the fate that Ruth was burdened with.
