The Other Dispatchers

Night Shift

Chapter 20: The Other Dispatchers

Seven consoles. Seven dispatchers. Seven headsets in a room on Poplar Avenue at 1 AM on a Wednesday in October, the seven dispatchers the night shift's full complement, the complement the number that the department had determined was sufficient to cover the city of Memphis from 10 PM to 6 AM, the sufficiency a calculation of call volume and response time and staffing budget, the calculation producing the number seven, the seven the team, the team the shift, the shift the unit that worked together five nights a week and that had worked together for long enough that the working-together had become a thing, a thing beyond the scheduling, a thing that was the particular bond of people who sat in adjacent chairs and heard the worst things the city could produce and who did not discuss the worst things but who knew that the person in the next chair was hearing them too, the knowing the bond, the bond the thing.

Console 3 was Tasha. Tasha Moore, twenty-four years old, two years on dispatch, the newest on the shift. Tasha had come from the call center at FedEx — had answered phones about packages and tracking numbers and delivery estimates and had answered them with the patience and the clarity that the hiring committee had recognized as transferable, the patience and the clarity the things that dispatch required and that Tasha had, the things that had survived the transition from tracking numbers to incident numbers, from packages to emergencies, from the questions about where a box was to the questions about where the blood was coming from.

Tasha was still learning. The learning was visible in the way Tasha held herself at the console — the posture slightly forward, the attention slightly taut, the body carrying the extra tension that the new dispatchers carried, the tension of a person who was still translating the protocol from the training manual's text to the body's instinct, the translating not yet complete, the protocol still requiring the conscious effort that it would not require in another year or two, when the protocol would have migrated from the mind to the muscle, from the thinking to the doing, the way it had migrated in Delia and in Marcus and in all the dispatchers who had been doing this long enough for the protocol to become the body's language rather than the mind's instruction.

Tasha was good. Tasha was good the way new dispatchers who would last were good — the voice steady even when the voice was uncertain, the steadiness a natural quality and not a learned one, the quality that Patricia had noticed in the training and that Barnes had confirmed in the first six months, the quality that said: this one will stay. The quality was rare. The quality was the thing that separated the dispatchers who lasted from the dispatchers who did not, the attrition rate in the first two years approximately forty percent, the forty percent the dispatchers who discovered that the training's simulated calls were not the same as the real calls, that the headset's delivery of the city's emergencies was a thing that the body could not sustain, that the voice required a material that the person did not have or did not want to spend.

Tasha had the material. Delia could hear it — could hear Tasha's voice from Console 3, twenty feet away across the dim floor, Tasha's voice taking a call, the voice young and clear and carrying the particular warmth that Tasha brought to the callers, the warmth that was Tasha's, the warmth that the training had not given her and the experience had not taken from her, the warmth intact after two years of calls, the warmth the sign, the sign that said: this one has the material. This one will stay.

Console 4 was Bailey. Bailey, twenty-six years old, two years on dispatch, the second-newest on the shift after Tasha. Bailey had come from the administrative office at Regional One Medical Center — had processed intake forms and insurance verifications and the paperwork that the emergency room generated, had sat at a desk thirty feet from the trauma bay and had heard the sounds that the trauma bay produced without seeing the sources, the sounds traveling through the wall and the door and the administrative partition, the sounds the sirens arriving and the voices shouting and the equipment rolling and the particular silence that followed the silences, and Bailey had heard the sounds for three years and had processed the paperwork and had wondered what it would be like to be closer, to be the person who responded rather than the person who recorded, and the wondering had led to the application and the application had led to the interview and the interview had led to the training and the training had led to Console 4.

Bailey was young for the shift. The youngness was visible — not in the face, which was composed, not in the hands, which were steady, but in the attention, the particular quality of attention that the newer dispatchers carried, the attention that was still effortful, still conscious, still the product of the mind's instruction rather than the body's habit. Bailey attended to the console the way a person attends to a new instrument — with the care of someone who has learned the fingerings but has not yet forgotten that the fingerings require learning, the care that would soften over the years into the fluency that Marcus had, the fluency that looked like ease and was not ease but was the attention so deeply practiced that the practicing had become invisible.

Bailey researched. Bailey was the dispatcher who looked up the outcomes — who checked the CAD the next shift for the follow-up, who searched the address for subsequent incidents, who found the names that the call had not provided, the names that converted the call from an incident number to a story, the story that the system did not require and that the system did not want but that Bailey needed, the needing the way Bailey processed the calls, the needing the closing of the loop, the loop that the system left open and that Bailey closed because the closing was Bailey's way of honoring the call, of saying: this happened, these were the people, this was the outcome, the outcome known, the knowing the weight, the weight the cost of the closing, the cost that Bailey paid because Bailey could not leave the loop open, could not let the call end at the disposition, could not let the record be the record without knowing what the record meant.

The researching had cost Bailey. The researching had given Bailey the names — Miles, four years old, and Layla, six years old, the children from the Winchester Road accident, the children whose call Bailey had taken and whose protocol Bailey had followed and whose units Bailey had dispatched and whose deaths Bailey had learned about through the researching, the names entering Bailey's body and living there, the names the weight that the researching produced, the weight that Barnes had addressed in the debrief, the weight that Bailey carried at Console 4 alongside the headset and the protocol and the two years of calls that were becoming the archive, the archive still small, the archive still building, the archive the thing that would grow with the years if Bailey stayed, and Bailey was staying, Bailey was in the chair, Bailey was taking the calls, the staying the answer that the body was giving to the question that the second year asked.

Console 5 was Rodriguez. Rodriguez, the researcher, the closer of loops, the dispatcher who could not leave the call at the disposition but who followed the call forward into the system, checking the CAD the next shift for the follow-up, searching the address for subsequent incidents, looking for the outcome that the protocol did not require and the system did not provide but that Rodriguez needed, the needing his way of managing the not-knowing that the job produced, the not-knowing that was the job's particular cruelty and its particular mercy, the cruelty the open question and the mercy the blank space, and Rodriguez could not abide the blank space, could not leave the question open, could not hold the call in the archive without knowing what the call had meant.

Rodriguez had been on the shift long enough that the researching had become known, had become his thing the way the thermos was Marcus's thing and the garden photograph was Thompson's thing, Rodriguez's thing the checking, the looking-up, the following of the call past the dispatch into the field, into the hospital, into the outcome. The other dispatchers knew that Rodriguez researched because Rodriguez's researching had, on occasion, produced information that traveled — Rodriguez mentioning in the break room that the woman from the domestic on Bellevue had filed for a protective order, Rodriguez noting that the child from the medical on Getwell had been released from Le Bonheur, the information traveling from Rodriguez to the shift the way all information traveled on the dispatch floor, quietly, without ceremony, the information received by the other dispatchers with the nod that said: good, the loop is closed, the call had an outcome, the outcome is known.

The researching was Rodriguez's way of caring. The researching was the thing that the protocol did not require and that Barnes watched with the particular attention of a supervisor who understood that the researching was both the coping and the cost, the coping because the knowing was better than the not-knowing for Rodriguez, the cost because the knowing sometimes delivered the worst answer, the answer that the blank space had mercifully concealed, the answer that was: the patient died, the victim returned to the house, the child did not recover, the answer that entered Rodriguez's archive and lived there with the weight of certainty rather than the lighter weight of possibility.

Delia saw Rodriguez. Delia saw Rodriguez the way she saw all of them — peripherally, continuously, the seeing the ambient attention that the adjacent consoles produced, the attention that registered Rodriguez's posture and Rodriguez's typing and Rodriguez's voice without consciously monitoring them, the seeing the knowledge that the person at Console 5 was working, was taking calls, was holding the bank in the way that Rodriguez held the bank, which was by closing the loops, by knowing the outcomes, by converting the open questions into closed ones, the closing the holding, the holding Rodriguez's way.

Rodriguez did not discuss the researching. Rodriguez did not explain why the outcomes mattered, did not justify the checking, did not offer the researching as advice to the other dispatchers. The researching was his, the way the thermos was Marcus's and the crying was private and the fist was the fist. The dispatchers did not discuss their ways. The ways were the ways — the individual adaptations that the individual dispatchers had developed for the individual carrying of the shared weight, the adaptations as personal as fingerprints, as necessary as breathing, the adaptations that the protocol did not teach and the training did not provide and the experience produced.

Console 6 was Marcus. Marcus was Marcus — the thermos and the bass register and the fist and the bank and the ten years and the Sandra and the French press coffee and the sitting-with, Marcus the constant, Marcus the thing that Console 6 was, Console 6 and Marcus a single entity the way Console 7 and Delia were a single entity, the person and the station merged by the years, the years the welding, the welding the permanence.

Console 7 was Delia. Delia was Delia.

Console 8 was Thompson. Thompson, who had been on the shift long enough that the being-on-the-shift had become the thing, Thompson at Console 8 the way Marcus was at Console 6, the person and the station fused by the years, the years the welding. Thompson was the dispatcher who had taken the suicide call on Thursday — the call that had delivered the sound, the sound that Thompson would not describe and that the other dispatchers did not ask him to describe, the not-asking the respect, the respect the boundary. Thompson had sat at Console 8 for four minutes after that call without taking another, the four minutes the body's response, the body needing to be at the console but not on the console, needing the headset off and the phone silent and the four minutes of stillness that Barnes had recognized and extended to twenty, Barnes saying "take twenty" and Thompson taking the twenty and returning and pressing the key and taking the next call, the returning the answer, the answer that said: I am here, I am at Console 8, the sound is in the archive and the archive is in the body and the body is in the chair and the chair is at the console and the console is taking calls. Thompson had declined the debrief — had said "I'm good, Sarge" — and the declining was Thompson's way, the way of a dispatcher who processed through the working, through the taking of the next call and the next and the next, the calls the processing, the processing the continuance, the continuance Thompson's adaptation.

And the supervisor's station was Keisha Barnes. Barnes at the station that was set back from the row of consoles, the station elevated slightly — a step, a single step, the step the hierarchy, the hierarchy physical, the supervisor's station higher than the dispatchers' consoles by six inches, the six inches the rank, the rank the visibility, the visibility the thing that allowed Barnes to see the floor, to see the seven consoles and the seven dispatchers, to see the room the way a conductor saw an orchestra, the seeing the managing, the managing the conducting, the conducting the thing that Barnes did.

Barnes had been a dispatcher. Barnes had been at Console 4 before Bailey was at Console 4 — Barnes had been a night-shift dispatcher for fifteen years before the promotion, the fifteen years the qualification, the qualification not the paperwork or the exam or the interview (though all three were required) but the fifteen years, the fifteen years of headset and voice and calls and weight, the fifteen years that gave Barnes the knowledge that the supervision required, the knowledge that was not the knowledge of the protocol or the system or the technology but the knowledge of the people, the knowledge of what the dispatchers carried and how the carrying affected them and when the carrying exceeded the capacity and the exceeding required the intervention — the break, the debrief, the Employee Assistance referral, the conversation at the supervisor's station that began with Barnes saying "sit down" and that continued with Barnes saying the thing that needed saying.

Barnes managed the floor the way the dispatchers managed the calls — with the protocol and the training and the experience and the thing beyond the protocol, the thing that was the human, the human reading the other humans, the reading continuous, the reading the attention that Barnes paid to the seven dispatchers who were her dispatchers, her shift, her people. Barnes read the floor the way Delia read the CAD — peripherally, continuously, the reading ambient, the data entering the awareness and updating the picture, the picture that was the shift's current state, the state that included not just the calls being worked but the people working them, the people's condition as relevant to Barnes as the calls' condition, the two conditions linked because the people's condition determined the calls' handling and the calls' handling was Barnes's responsibility.

Barnes read Bailey and saw the second year and the researching and the names — Miles and Layla — and the tears in the debrief and the question that the second year asked, which was: will this one stay, and the answer that Barnes saw forming in Bailey's continued presence at Console 4, the presence the answer. Barnes read Rodriguez and saw the loops, the closing of the loops, the checking and the following and the cost that the closing extracted and the coping that the closing provided. Barnes read Tasha and saw the material and the potential and the two years that were approaching the critical third. Barnes read Marcus and saw the thermos and the steady, the always-steady, the steady that Barnes trusted the way she trusted the building's foundation. Barnes read Delia and saw Console 7, saw the voice, saw the six years, saw the shaking after the children's calls and the stillness after the bridge call and the steadiness always returning, the steadiness Delia's material, the material holding. Barnes read Thompson and saw Console 8, saw the Thursday call and the four minutes of silence and the declined debrief and the returning, the returning that Barnes was still watching, still monitoring, the watching the care, the care the supervision, the supervision the thing.

The seven dispatchers worked. The seven dispatchers took calls — simultaneously, independently, each dispatcher in a headset, each headset in a call, each call a world, the seven worlds coexisting in the same room, the room containing seven emergencies at once, seven voices speaking to seven callers, seven protocols navigating seven decision trees, seven dispatches being made from seven consoles, the seven simultaneous conversations creating the murmur that was the dispatch floor's sound, the murmur that was the room's ambient noise, the murmur that was the sound of the city being held.

Delia could hear the murmur. She could hear it beneath her own call — her voice in her headset, her call her world, her world the caller on the line, but beneath her world the murmur of the six other worlds, the six other voices, the six other dispatchers taking the six other calls, the murmur the evidence that she was not alone, that the room contained others, that the weight was shared.

The sharing was not literal. The sharing was not the sharing of calls — each dispatcher took their own calls, each dispatcher carried their own weight, each dispatcher was alone in the headset the way each caller was alone in the emergency. The sharing was ambient, was atmospheric, was the sharing of the space and the time and the condition, the condition of being a person in a headset hearing the city's emergencies, the condition shared by seven people in the same room at the same time, the sharing the solidarity, the solidarity the bond, the bond the thing that held the shift together across the nights and the months and the years.

The solidarity was not expressed. The solidarity was not the subject of conversation or the object of reflection, the solidarity not discussed in the break room or acknowledged in the debriefs. The solidarity was lived, was practiced, was the thing that happened when Marcus extended the thermos and when Tasha covered Delia's console during a bathroom break and when Thompson nodded to Bailey after a bad call and the nod said: I know, and when Barnes brought the coffee that nobody drank for its quality and when the seven of them sat in the break room during the debrief and the sitting was the thing.

The solidarity was the not-discussing. The not-discussing was the thing — the thing that the dispatchers did not do, the discussing of the calls, the sharing of the details, the verbal processing that the therapists recommended and that the dispatchers did not perform because the performing would make it larger and the job required making it manageable and the managing required the not-discussing, the not-discussing the container, the container the silence, the silence shared.

They did not discuss the calls. They discussed other things — the break room conversations about sports and children and weather and politics and the particular Memphis topics that the particular Memphis people discussed, the topics that were not the calls, the topics that were the life outside the calls, the life that the dispatchers maintained alongside the dispatch, the life that the children and the gardens and the thermoses and the drawings represented, the life that was the counterweight, the counterweight to the calls, the calls the weight and the life the counterweight and the two held in the balance that the dispatchers maintained.

At 1:17 AM, Bailey stood. Bailey removed her headset. Bailey walked to the break room. The walking was the signal — the walking-to-the-break-room the signal that the call had been a bad call, the walking the body's response to the call, the response that said: I need the room, I need the space, I need the minutes between the call and the next call, the minutes that the break room provided.

Barnes saw. Barnes saw the walking and Barnes made the note — the mental note, the note that the supervisor made when the dispatcher needed the break, the note that said: Bailey, 1:17 AM, break room, returning when returning. Barnes did not follow. Barnes did not follow because the following was not always the thing, the thing sometimes being the space, the space that the dispatcher needed alone, the aloneness the processing, the processing the crying or the sitting or the staring at the vending machine or the standing in the corridor or whatever form the processing took, the form the dispatcher's own.

Five minutes. Bailey returned. Bailey sat at Console 4. Bailey put on the headset. The eyes were red — slightly, barely, the redness visible only to the people who knew to look, the people being the other six dispatchers and Barnes, the eight people who were the shift and who saw each other at the level of detail that the shared nights produced, the detail that noticed the redness and that did not mention the redness because the mentioning was not the thing, the not-mentioning the respect, the respect the solidarity.

Bailey pressed the key. Bailey took the next call. The voice was steady.

The seven dispatchers worked. The room held them. The room held the murmur of seven voices and the glow of twenty-one screens and the hum of the equipment and the calls, the calls that entered the room through the phone lines and that were processed and dispatched and logged and resolved, the calls the room's business, the room's purpose, the room's reason for existing.

The room was ugly. The room was windowless and dim and the carpet was industrial and the ceiling tiles were stained and the furniture was government-issue and the vending machines in the break room did not reliably vend and the coffee pot made coffee that nobody drank for its quality. The room was not a place that anyone would choose to be, was not a place that design or aesthetics had touched, was a place that function had built and function had furnished and function maintained.

But the room was the room. The room was the place where the seven dispatchers sat five nights a week and took the calls and did the work and carried the weight and held the bank and maintained the voice. The room was the place where Marcus's thermos sat on the desk and where Bailey's eyes were sometimes red after the researching delivered the names and where Tasha's voice was learning the steadiness and where Rodriguez's loops were being closed and where Thompson sat at Console 8 with the Thursday call in the archive and where Barnes watched from the elevated station and where Delia sat at Console 7 with the headset on and the voice engaged.

The room was the unit. The seven dispatchers were the unit. The unit was the shift. The shift was the thing that worked when the parts worked, when the seven consoles were staffed and the seven voices were speaking and the seven headsets were receiving the calls and the supervisor was watching and the room was functioning, the functioning the thing, the functioning the product of seven people who had chosen this room and this work and this weight, seven people who sat in adjacent chairs and heard the worst and held it and did not discuss it and held it manageable by the holding and the not-discussing and the being-there, the being-there the thing, the being-there the solidarity, the solidarity the shift.

The phone beeped. Seven phones beeped — not simultaneously, not in unison, but in the staggered rhythm that the calls produced, the calls arriving in the rhythm of the city's emergencies, the rhythm arrhythmic, the calls coming when they came.

Seven dispatchers pressed seven keys. Seven voices said seven versions of the same words:

Memphis 911, what is the location of your emergency?

The seven voices were seven voices. The seven voices were one voice. The seven voices were the shift.

And the shift worked. And the room held. And the night continued.

Seven consoles. Seven dispatchers. Seven headsets. One room. One shift. One night.

The shared weight. The shared silence. The shared work.

The murmur on the floor. The voices in the headsets. The city in the phones.

The dispatchers worked.