The Debrief

Night Shift

Chapter 16: The Debrief

The break room was not designed for gatherings. The break room was designed for the individual — for the single dispatcher on a fifteen-minute break, eating a sandwich from the vending machine, drinking coffee from the pot that was always on and always old, sitting at the table that seated four and that was usually occupied by one, the one person on break while the other five were on the floor and the floor was the job and the job did not pause for the break, the break a rotation, one dispatcher at a time, the rotation ensuring that the floor was never short, that the consoles were never empty, that the phones were always answered, the phones always, always answered.

But Barnes had gathered the shift. She had arranged the rotation so that the floor was covered by three — Rodriguez, Thompson, and the new dispatcher, Tasha Moore — while Marcus and Delia and Bailey came to the break room, and the gathering was the debrief, the debrief that Barnes called when the week had been the kind of week that required the gathering, the kind of week that accumulated a weight that the individual dispatchers could carry individually but that the shift, as a unit, needed to acknowledge collectively, the acknowledgment the purpose of the debrief, the acknowledgment that the week had been hard.

The week had been hard.

Monday: an officer-involved shooting in Frayser. Two officers responding to a domestic call, shots fired, the suspect dead, the officers uninjured but the call — the call that Delia had dispatched, the call that had been a routine domestic until it was not routine, until the radio traffic erupted with the sounds of the shooting, the sounds that entered the dispatch floor through the radio channel and that Delia processed with the professional steadiness that the moment required while simultaneously dispatching backup and EMS and supervisory units and the entire escalating apparatus that an officer-involved shooting activated — the call had been the week's first weight.

Tuesday: a fatal traffic accident on Winchester Road. A pickup truck crossing the median, head-on collision with a sedan. The sedan contained a woman and two children. The pickup driver survived. The woman survived. The children did not. The call had been taken by Bailey, at Console 4 — Bailey who was twenty-six and had been on dispatch for two years and who had taken the call and followed the protocol and dispatched the units and stayed on the line and done everything correctly, everything by the book, everything the training had prepared her for, and the doing-everything-correctly had not prepared her for the information that came through after the EMS arrived, the information that the children were four and six and were dead at the scene, the information that entered Bailey's headset and traveled through Bailey's ear to Bailey's mind and landed in the place where the calls involving children lived, the place where every dispatcher kept the calls that could not be held by the bank, the calls that overflowed the bank and entered the person and stayed.

Wednesday: a quiet night. The quiet was worse than the loud, in a way — the quiet after the Monday and the Tuesday was the quiet of a floor that was holding its breath, the dispatchers working their calls but working them with the heightened awareness that a bad week produces, the awareness that the next call could be the next bad call, the awareness that was not anxiety but was the thing adjacent to anxiety, the thing that had no name in the protocol's vocabulary but that every dispatcher recognized, the state of being ready for the worst after the worst had already happened twice that week.

Thursday: a suicide. Not Delia's call — Thompson's call, at Console 8. A man had called 911 and said he was going to kill himself and then, while Thompson was talking, while Thompson was following the crisis protocol and asking the questions and trying to keep the man on the line and dispatching the units — while Thompson was doing all of this, the man had done it. Thompson had heard it. The sound — the specific sound, the sound that Thompson would not describe and that the other dispatchers did not ask him to describe because the not-asking was the respect and the respect was the boundary and the boundary was the thing that kept the dispatchers from sharing the details that would become the other dispatchers' details, the details that would travel from Thompson's headset to Thompson's mouth to the other dispatchers' ears and the traveling would be the spreading of the weight, the weight distributed from one to many, and the distributing was sometimes necessary and sometimes destructive and the distinction was the supervisor's to make.

Thompson had gone silent after the call. He had logged it. He had sat at Console 8 for four minutes without taking another call. Barnes had noticed — Barnes always noticed, Barnes's job was to notice — and Barnes had gone to Console 8 and stood behind Thompson and placed her hand on his shoulder and said: "Take twenty." And Thompson had taken twenty — twenty minutes in the break room, alone, sitting at the table that seated four, not eating, not drinking, not doing anything except sitting, the sitting the body's response to the call, the body needing to be somewhere other than the console, somewhere that was not the headset, somewhere that was the break room with its vending machines and its coffee pot and its table with its coffee stains, the break room that was ugly and utilitarian and was, in that moment, the only place in the building that was not the dispatch floor, the only place where Thompson could sit and not take calls and not hear the phone and not press the key and not say "Memphis 911."

Friday. Tonight. The debrief.

Barnes stood at the head of the table. She did not sit — Barnes rarely sat during debriefs, Barnes stood because standing was the posture of authority and authority was what the debrief required, not the authority of command but the authority of experience, the authority of a woman who had been a dispatcher for fifteen years and a supervisor for five and who had heard what the dispatchers had heard and who had survived it and who was now responsible for ensuring that the dispatchers survived it, the surviving not automatic, the surviving a process, the surviving something that required attention and intervention and the particular skill of knowing when a dispatcher needed the break room and when a dispatcher needed Employee Assistance and when a dispatcher needed the debrief and when a dispatcher needed to go home.

The break room held them — Barnes standing, Marcus leaning against the counter near the coffee pot, Delia at the table, Bailey at the table. Four people in a room designed for one. The room felt smaller with four, the walls closer, the vending machines more present, the fluorescent light more visible, the room's ugliness more apparent because the room was now being used for something it was not designed for, the room repurposed from the individual's respite to the group's processing, the room holding the shift the way the building held the room, awkwardly, insufficiently, but holding.

Barnes spoke. She did not begin with a preamble. She did not begin with a summary of the week. She began with the statement, the statement that she had made in other debriefs and that the dispatchers who had been through other debriefs recognized as Barnes's opening, Barnes's thesis, Barnes's anchor.

"You carry what you carry," Barnes said. "You do not carry it alone."

The words entered the room. The words sat in the room the way the dispatchers sat in the room — occupying space, taking up the air, making the room feel both smaller and larger, smaller because the words were heavy and heavy things make spaces feel small, larger because the words opened something, the words created a space inside the room's space, the space where the carrying could be acknowledged, the space where the weight could be named even if the specific weights — the specific calls, the specific sounds, the specific details — were not named.

"This week was a week," Barnes said. "Monday's OIS. Tuesday's fatals. Thursday." She paused at Thursday. The pause was for Thompson, who was not in the room but who was on the floor, at Console 8, working, because Thompson had declined the debrief — had said, when Barnes offered, "I'm good, Sarge" — and the declining was Thompson's right and Barnes respected the right while also noting it, filing it in the supervisory record that Barnes kept in her mind, the record that tracked the dispatchers' states the way the CAD tracked the calls, the record that said: Thompson declined the debrief, watch Thompson, monitor Thompson's calls, check Thompson's tone, look for the signs.

"You carry it here," Barnes said. "In this room, with these people. Or you carry it to Employee Assistance — the number is on the board, it has always been on the board, it will always be on the board, and the day you call that number is not the day you are weak, it is the day you are smart, because smart people use the resources and the resources exist because the people who built this system understood that the system does damage and the damage requires repair and the repair is not weakness, the repair is maintenance, the repair is the thing that keeps you functional, the thing that keeps you in the chair, the thing that keeps you on the headset."

Barnes had given this speech before. Not the same speech — each debrief's speech was different, the specifics different, the week's particular weight addressed with the week's particular words. But the speech's structure was the same, the speech's purpose was the same, the speech's thesis was the same: you are not alone, the weight is real, the system provides resources, use them.

The dispatchers listened. They listened the way they listened to everything — with attention, with the focus that the headset had trained into them, the focus that was their professional instrument and that they could not turn off, the focus that made them good listeners in every context, the focus that was their gift and their burden, the gift of hearing what others said with the precision that the job required and the burden of hearing what others said with the precision that the job required, because the precision meant they heard everything, heard the words and the tone and the pauses and the breath, heard the truth beneath the words and the weight beneath the truth.

Marcus drank from the thermos. The thermos was in the break room because Marcus was in the break room, the thermos traveling with Marcus the way a tool travels with a craftsman, the thermos part of Marcus's equipment, the thermos the thing that Marcus held when his hands needed to hold something, the holding the displacement, the activity of drinking the substitute for the activity of speaking, because Marcus did not speak in debriefs, Marcus listened, Marcus held the thermos, Marcus was present, and the presence was his contribution, the presence of the ten-year veteran, the presence that said to the others: I am here, I have been here for ten years, I have survived ten years of this, and the surviving is possible.

Bailey was crying. Not openly — quietly, the tears moving down her face without sound, the crying the quiet crying that dispatchers did, the crying that did not produce sobs or gasps or the visible collapse that crying produced in other contexts, the crying that was restrained by the same discipline that restrained the voice during the calls, the discipline that said: you may feel this but you may not express this fully, you may express this in the reduced form, the form that is tears without sound, the form that is the dispatcher's crying, the crying that happens inside the professional container.

Delia saw Bailey's crying. Delia recognized Bailey's crying because Delia had cried Bailey's crying — had sat in this room or at her console or in her car in the parking lot and had cried the quiet crying, the tears without sound, the crying that was the body's release when the body had held the calls too long and the holding became too much and the too-much became the tears. Delia had cried after the calls involving children. Delia had cried after the CPR calls where the counting went on too long and the EMS arrived too late and the voice that said "keep pushing" was the voice that was saying "keep pushing" to a caller whose effort was heroic and whose effort was not going to be enough because the patient was already gone and the protocol continued because the protocol did not pronounce death, the protocol continued until the paramedics pronounced, and the continuing was the hardest thing, the counting that continued after the hope had ended, the counting that was the protocol's mercy and the protocol's cruelty.

Bailey was crying about the children. Bailey was crying about the four-year-old and the six-year-old on Winchester Road. Bailey was crying because Bailey was twenty-six and did not have children of her own but was young enough that the children on the call were not abstract, were not remote, were children whose ages she could imagine, whose faces she could not see but could construct from the available data — four and six, a boy and a girl (the details had come through in the follow-up), the boy four and the girl six, and the boy's name was Miles and the girl's name was Layla, and Bailey knew the names because Bailey was like Rodriguez, Bailey researched, Bailey looked up the outcomes, Bailey closed the loops, and the closing of this loop had given her the names and the names had made the weight heavier because names make everything heavier, names convert statistics into people and people are heavier than statistics.

"Bailey," Barnes said.

Bailey looked up. The tears were on her face. She did not wipe them. The not-wiping was not a gesture — it was the absence of the gesture, the gesture deferred, the crying allowed to exist on the face without the hand's intervention, the tears the evidence that the human was present inside the dispatcher, the evidence that the bank had been breached and the river had entered.

"Miles and Layla," Barnes said. "You looked them up."

"Yes," Bailey said.

Barnes nodded. The nod was not approval — Barnes did not approve of looking up the outcomes, Barnes understood why dispatchers did it but Barnes knew the cost, knew that the closing of the loop was the opening of the wound, knew that the names made the weight heavier and the heaviness was the cost and the cost was paid by the dispatcher who closed the loop. But the nod was acknowledgment. The nod said: you looked them up, you know their names, the knowing is in you now, the knowing is the weight, and the weight is the thing we are here to address.

"Miles and Layla," Barnes said again. She said the names the way Delia had said Dorothy's name on the phone with Walter at 3 AM — said the names because the saying was the honoring and the honoring was the thing, the names said aloud in the break room of the Memphis Emergency Communications Center at 2 AM on a Friday in October, said by a supervisor to a dispatcher who was crying, said into the ugly room with its vending machines and its coffee stains, the names entering the room the way the calls entered the headset, traveling from the speaker to the listener, the names now held not just by Bailey but by everyone in the room — by Barnes and by Marcus and by Delia, by the four people standing and sitting and leaning in the break room, the four people who now held the names the way they held the calls, in the body, in the archive, in the place where the work lived after the work was done.

"You did everything right on that call," Barnes said. "You followed the protocol. You dispatched the units. You stayed on the line. You did your job. And the children died. And the dying was not your job. The dying was the accident. The dying was the truck crossing the median. The dying was the physics of a head-on collision. The dying was not you. The dying was not your call. The dying was not your protocol. The dying was not your fault."

The words were necessary. The words were the words that the debrief existed to provide — the words that separated the dispatcher's responsibility from the outcome, the words that drew the line between what the dispatcher could control and what the dispatcher could not control, the line that was essential, that was the line that kept the dispatchers from assuming the weight that was not theirs, the weight of the outcome, the weight that belonged to the accident and the physics and the truck and the median and the speed and the time of day and the thousand variables that had converged to produce the collision that produced the deaths that produced the call that Bailey had taken and that Bailey was now carrying as though the carrying were the penance for a sin she had not committed.

"The call is the beginning," Barnes said. "The call is not the ending. You sit here, at this console, and you take the call. That's your beginning. That's your part. The ending — the ending happens in the field, in the ambulance, in the hospital, in the world. The ending is not yours. You do not own the ending. You own the beginning. You own the voice. You own the protocol. You own the dispatch. And the dispatch was right. And the protocol was right. And the voice was right. And the ending was wrong. And the wrong ending is not your beginning's fault."

Marcus set the thermos on the counter. The setting-down was a sound — the stainless steel on the laminate counter, a small sound, a nothing sound, but in the quiet of the debrief the sound was audible, was present, was a punctuation, Marcus's contribution to the debrief, Marcus's way of saying without saying: I hear this. I am here. The thermos is down. I am listening.

"I want to talk about Thursday," Barnes said. "Thompson's call."

The room shifted. The shift was not physical — no one moved, no one changed position, no one adjusted their posture. The shift was atmospheric, the room's temperature changing — not the air temperature but the emotional temperature, the temperature that the people in the room generated with their attention and their memory and their knowledge of what Thursday's call had been. Thursday's call had been the suicide. Thursday's call had been the sound.

"Thompson is on the floor. Thompson said he's good. I'm watching Thompson. I'm going to watch Thompson for the next two weeks. If I see something, I'll address it. If Thompson needs to talk, I'm available. If Thompson needs Employee Assistance, I'll facilitate. But I want you all to know — what Thompson heard on that call is the thing that dispatchers hear sometimes. It is the thing that the headset delivers sometimes. And the thing is not something you prepare for. The thing is not something the protocol addresses. The thing is the sound of a person ending their life while you are on the line trying to prevent it. And the trying and the failing — the trying and the failing is not a failure. The trying is the job. The outcome is not the job. The trying is always the right thing. The outcome is the other person's thing. And the other person's thing is the other person's right, even when the right is the worst thing."

Barnes paused. The pause was the space. The space was for the weight. The weight of Thursday's call sat in the pause, in the room, in the air between the vending machines and the table and the four people.

"If you need to talk about Thursday," Barnes said, "talk to me, talk to each other, talk to Employee Assistance. Do not carry Thursday alone. Do not carry Monday alone. Do not carry Tuesday alone. You carry it here, in this room, with these people, or you carry it to someone you trust. But you do not carry it alone. That's not a suggestion. That's the standard."

The debrief was not a therapy session. The debrief was not a group counseling meeting. The debrief was a supervisory intervention, a management tool, a mechanism that the department provided for the purpose of maintaining the dispatch staff's operational capacity, the capacity that was measured in the ability to take calls and dispatch units and follow protocols and maintain the voice, the capacity that degraded under the weight of the calls if the weight was not addressed, if the weight was left to accumulate without acknowledgment, without the release that the debrief provided, the release that was not catharsis but was ventilation, the opening of the valve that allowed some of the pressure to escape, the pressure that built during the weeks when the calls were the calls that built pressure.

The debrief was also something more than a management tool. The debrief was the room. The debrief was the people in the room. The debrief was Marcus with the thermos and Bailey with the tears and Delia with the listening and Barnes with the words, the four of them in the ugly room at 2 AM sharing the weight that they could not share on the floor because the floor was the job and the job required the voice and the voice required the steadiness and the steadiness required the bank and the bank required the river to flow past and the flowing required the not-holding, and the debrief was the space where the not-holding could pause, where the dispatchers could hold the calls for a moment, could feel the weight for a moment, could acknowledge the river for a moment, before returning to the floor and the console and the headset and the bank.

"We go back in five," Barnes said. "Drink some water. Eat something. Five minutes."

The debrief was over. The debrief had lasted twelve minutes. Twelve minutes in the break room while the floor was covered by three dispatchers and the city's calls continued and the system functioned and the phones rang and the voices answered and the dispatching continued, the system pausing for nothing, the system accommodating the debrief by redistributing the load, the load borne by fewer people for twelve minutes so that the people who bore the load the rest of the time could stand in the break room and hear Barnes say: you do not carry it alone.

Bailey wiped her face. The wiping was the gesture — the gesture that came after the debrief, the gesture that was the transition from the debrief's permission to feel back to the floor's requirement to function, the wiping the physical act that prepared the face for the console, the face that the headset would cover, the face that the callers would not see but that the dispatchers beside her would see, the face that needed to be the face of a person who was ready to take the next call.

Marcus picked up the thermos. He nodded at Barnes. The nod was the thank-you, the thank-you that Marcus gave Barnes after every debrief, the nod that said: you did the thing, the thing that the supervisor does, the thing that the institution does not mandate but that you provide, the thing that keeps us here, the thing that keeps us in the chairs.

Delia stood. She looked at Barnes. Barnes looked at Delia. The looking was the communication — the communication that did not require words because the words had been said and the words were sufficient and the looking was the confirmation that the words had been received and the receiving was the thing.

They returned to the floor. They sat at their consoles. They put on their headsets. They logged in to the phones. The double tone beeped. The calls came.

The floor was the floor. The calls were the calls. The night was the night.

And the break room was empty again — the vending machines humming, the coffee pot warming, the table with its coffee stains, the room that had held the debrief and was now holding nothing, the room waiting for the next person who needed it, the next dispatcher on break, the next individual sitting at the table that seated four, eating a sandwich, drinking coffee, alone in the room that had just held four people and the weight of a week.

The room held everything. The room held nothing. The room was the break room.

And the shift continued, the way the shift always continued, the way the shift continued after every debrief and every bad week and every call that broke the bank and every name that entered the archive — Miles and Layla and Dorothy and the man on the bridge that Thompson had heard — the shift continued because the shift was the job and the job was the night and the night did not end because the debrief happened, the night ended when 6 AM happened, when the morning happened, when the light came and the headset came off and the door opened and the world was there.

The shift continued. The dispatchers worked. The phones rang. The voices answered.

Memphis 911, what is the location of your emergency?