The Suicide Call

Night Shift

Chapter 24: The Suicide Call

The call came through as a transfer. Not a direct call — a transfer from the responding officer on scene, the officer who had been dispatched to the Hernando de Soto Bridge, the I-40 bridge over the Mississippi River, the bridge that connected Memphis to West Memphis, Arkansas, the bridge that was the city's western edge, the bridge that spanned the river at a height of one hundred and five feet above the water, the height sufficient for what the person on the bridge was contemplating.

A trucker had called it in. A trucker crossing the bridge at 2:43 AM had seen a figure standing on the pedestrian railing — not the traffic barrier but the outer railing, the railing that was the last structure between the bridge deck and the air, the air that was one hundred and five feet of space above the Mississippi, the Mississippi that was dark and wide and moving beneath the bridge with the current that had been moving for ten thousand years, the river that did not care what happened on the bridge, the river that received what was given to it and carried it south.

Police and fire had been dispatched. The officer on scene — a young officer, Delia did not know his name, knew only his call sign, Unit 347 — the officer had made visual contact with the person on the railing. The officer had approached. The officer had initiated the crisis protocol, the protocol that said: do not rush, do not grab, do not issue commands. Speak calmly. Establish rapport. Buy time. And call dispatch for a crisis line transfer — the protocol that recognized that the officer's training was tactical and the situation required therapeutic, and the bridge between tactical and therapeutic was the phone, the phone that the officer gave to the person on the railing, the phone that connected the person on the railing to the dispatch center, the dispatch center that connected the person to a dispatcher who had been trained in crisis communication, the dispatcher who was Delia.

The transfer came through at 3:07 AM. Delia received the call. Barnes had flagged it — Barnes monitoring the CAD, Barnes seeing the incident type (suicide attempt, bridge, person on railing), Barnes making the decision that the call should go to Delia, the decision based on Barnes's knowledge of the dispatchers' strengths, the knowledge that Barnes had accumulated over five years of supervising the night shift, the knowledge that said: Delia's voice is the voice for this call. Delia's voice has the quality — the warmth, the steadiness, the patience, the particular combination of firmness and gentleness — that this call requires.

Delia took the call. The phone connected. The line opened.

She heard the bridge. She heard the wind — the wind that blew across the bridge at height, the wind that was the river's breath, the wind that carried the sound of the cars on the bridge (the traffic reduced at 3 AM but not eliminated, the trucks still crossing, the cars still passing) and the sound of the river below (the river's sound a low constant, the sound of water moving in volume) and the sound of the night air at one hundred and five feet, the air that was different from the air at ground level, the air thinner and colder and moving faster, the air of the bridge.

She heard the breathing. Another breathing — not the silent call's breathing, not the breathing of hiding, but the breathing of the bridge, the breathing of a person standing on the railing of the Hernando de Soto Bridge at 3 AM, the breathing rapid and shallow and punctuated by the wind, the breathing of a person whose body was in the grip of the crisis that had brought them to the railing, the crisis that was not a single event but was the accumulation of events, the accumulation that had produced the decision to drive to the bridge and park and walk to the railing and climb the railing and stand on the outer edge, the outer edge that was the last place, the last surface, the last solid thing between the person and the fall.

"Hi," Delia said. "My name is Delia. I'm here to talk with you. Can you tell me your name?"

A pause. The pause was long — three seconds, four seconds, the seconds measured by the clock on the CAD, the seconds that Delia counted internally because the counting was her instrument, the counting the thing she did when the timing mattered, and in a crisis call the timing always mattered, the pauses meaningful, the silences data.

"Why does it matter?" The voice was young. The voice was male. The voice was tired — not the tired of a night shift but the tired of a person who had been carrying something for a long time and the carrying had exhausted the person and the exhaustion had brought the person to the bridge, the bridge the last place, the place where the carrying could end.

"It matters because I'd like to talk to you and it would help to know your name. You don't have to tell me. But I'd like to know."

Another pause. The wind filled the pause, the wind the bridge's constant, the wind the sound of the height.

"Chris."

"Chris, thank you. Can you tell me — are you on the railing right now?"

"Yeah."

"Are you holding on to something?"

"The cable. There's a cable."

"Okay. I'd like you to keep holding that cable while we talk. Can you do that?"

"Yeah."

The cable was the thing. The cable was the connection — not the phone connection, which was the other connection, but the physical connection, the connection between Chris's hand and the bridge's structure, the connection that kept Chris on the bridge rather than in the air, the connection that was a hand gripping a cable and the gripping was the hold, and the hold was the life, and Delia's first task was to keep the hold, to keep Chris's hand on the cable, to keep the physical connection intact while she built the other connection, the voice connection, the connection that traveled through the phone from the bridge to the headset, the connection that was the voice.

"Chris, I want to understand what's going on. Can you tell me what brought you to the bridge tonight?"

"Does it matter?"

"It matters to me."

The words were Delia's. The words were not the protocol's — the crisis protocol provided a framework, a set of guidelines, a sequence of approaches, but the crisis protocol was not a script the way the EMD protocol was a script, the crisis protocol was a framework that the dispatcher inhabited, a structure that the dispatcher moved within, the movement the dispatcher's own, the words the dispatcher's own, the voice the dispatcher's own. The crisis protocol said: establish rapport, express empathy, listen actively, do not argue, do not judge, do not challenge, do not minimize, do not make promises you cannot keep. The protocol said these things and the protocol was the framework and Delia moved within the framework, but the words — "it matters to me" — the words were Delia's, the words were the human inside the dispatcher, the human who was talking to a person on a bridge and who meant the words, who actually wanted to understand, who was not performing empathy but was experiencing empathy, the empathy the thing that the protocol could not teach and that the person brought to the protocol, the empathy the dispatcher's contribution to the framework.

"Nobody hears me," Chris said.

The three words entered Delia's headset. The three words traveled from the bridge to the headset and the words were not information in the protocol's sense, the words were not data, the words were not a determinant or a code or a disposition. The words were a person's statement of their condition, the condition that had brought them to the bridge, the condition expressed in three words: nobody hears me. Nobody listens. Nobody pays attention. Nobody receives what I am trying to communicate. The nobody being the world, the world that Chris had been communicating to and the world that had not heard, and the not-hearing was the wound, and the wound was the crisis, and the crisis was the bridge, and the bridge was the railing, and the railing was the edge.

"I hear you," Delia said. "I am hearing you right now."

She said it and the saying was the thing, the saying was the response that Chris needed, the response that was not advice or argument or solution but was the mirror, the reflection, the statement that said: the thing you said is not true right now, in this moment, on this phone call. Right now, someone hears you. Right now, I hear you. Right now, the thing that brought you to the bridge — the not-being-heard — the thing is not happening right now because I am hearing you and the hearing is real and the hearing is now.

Chris was quiet. The wind blew. The river moved beneath the bridge.

"Can you tell me more, Chris? What's been happening?"

And Chris told her. Chris told her in the fragments and the tangents and the circlings that crisis narratives always took, the narrative not linear but associative, the story jumping from one thing to another the way a fire jumps from one branch to another, the story's logic emotional rather than chronological, the story moving from the loss (a job, six months ago) to the isolation (the friends who stopped calling, the family who didn't understand) to the shame (the inability to pay the bills, the apartment lost, the sleeping in the car) to the exhaustion (the months of trying and failing and trying and failing) to the bridge (the bridge the destination that the exhaustion produced, the bridge the place where the trying could stop).

Delia listened. She listened the way she listened to all callers — with the trained attention that the headset focused — but she listened differently, too, because this call was different, because this call's outcome depended on the listening in a way that other calls' outcomes did not. Other calls' outcomes depended on the dispatch — on the speed of the response, on the skill of the paramedics, on the protocol's accuracy. This call's outcome depended on the listening, on the voice, on the connection that Delia built with Chris through the phone line, the connection that was the only thing between Chris and the fall.

She listened for twenty minutes. She listened while Chris talked. She did not interrupt. She did not redirect. She did not offer solutions or advice or the platitudes that people offered to people in crisis — the "it gets better" and the "people care about you" and the "this is a permanent solution to a temporary problem," the phrases that were true and were useless, the phrases that people in crisis had heard before and that had not helped because the hearing of the phrases was not the same as the being-heard, and the being-heard was the thing, and the being-heard was what Delia provided by listening.

She asked questions. Small questions, gentle questions, the questions that the framework suggested — questions that drew Chris further into the conversation, that extended the connection, that bought time, the time the thing, because time was the crisis responder's ally, time was the thing that allowed the crisis to pass, the acute crisis the peak that could not be maintained indefinitely, the peak that would descend if the time was given, if the person was held in the conversation long enough for the peak to subside, for the physiological intensity to diminish, for the rational mind to re-emerge from the emotional flood that had produced the bridge.

"Chris, you said you lost your apartment. Where have you been sleeping?"

"My car. A 2014 Honda. It's parked at the end of the bridge."

"That's been hard."

"Yeah."

"How long?"

"Three weeks."

"Three weeks is a long time. You've been managing for three weeks. That takes strength, Chris."

"It doesn't feel like strength."

"I know. It doesn't feel like strength when you're in it. But getting through three weeks of sleeping in your car — that's not nothing. That's endurance. That's you deciding, every day, to keep going."

"And this is where the going brought me."

"This is where tonight brought you. Tonight is not every night. Tonight is one night."

The conversation continued. Delia talked and Chris talked and the talking was the thing, the talking the bridge (the other bridge, the metaphorical bridge, the bridge between Chris's despair and Chris's survival), the talking the structure that held them both, the structure that Delia built with her voice and that Chris walked on and the walking was the time and the time was the ally.

Thirty minutes. The conversation had lasted thirty minutes. In thirty minutes, Delia had learned Chris's age (twenty-six), Chris's history (raised in Memphis, East High School, two years of community college, a job at a warehouse on Lamar Avenue that had laid off half its workforce in April), Chris's isolation (parents divorced, father in Texas, mother in Memphis but the relationship strained, friends dispersed, the social network that had existed at the warehouse dissolved with the layoff). She had learned the shape of Chris's crisis — the shape not dramatic, not cinematic, not the crisis of a single catastrophic event but the crisis of accumulation, the slow accretion of losses, the losses piling up the way the calls piled up in Delia's archive, layer by layer, loss by loss, until the pile was too high and the weight was too much and the bridge was the only place that the weight could be set down.

"Chris, I want to ask you something. And I want you to be honest with me."

"Okay."

"Before tonight — before you drove to the bridge — was there a time recently when things felt less heavy? A day, an hour, a moment when the weight was less?"

A pause. The longest pause of the conversation — eight seconds, the seconds counted, the seconds the measure of Chris's thinking, Chris's mind searching for the moment that Delia was asking about, the moment that was the evidence, the evidence that the heaviness was not constant, that the heaviness fluctuated, that the bridge was the response to the heaviest moment and not the response to the entire life, the life that contained moments of less heaviness alongside the moments of more heaviness.

"Last week," Chris said. "I was at the library. The Raines branch. I was there to use the internet, to look for jobs. And there was this kid — a little kid, maybe four — and the kid was looking at books and the kid pulled a book off the shelf and the book was too big for the kid and the book fell on the kid's foot and the kid laughed. The kid didn't cry. The kid laughed. And I laughed. And that was — it was a second. It was one second. But for that second I wasn't — the weight wasn't there."

Delia heard this. She heard the story and the story was the thing, the story was the evidence, the story was the moment that Chris's mind had found, the moment that contradicted the bridge, the moment that said: the weight is not constant. The weight lifts. The weight lifted last week, for a second, at the library, because a four-year-old dropped a book on his foot and laughed. The moment was small. The moment was nothing, by most measures — a child laughing in a library. But the moment was everything, by the measure that mattered right now, the measure that was: is the weight constant? Is the bridge the answer to a permanent condition? Or is the bridge the answer to a temporary peak?

"That second," Delia said. "That second at the library. That second is real. That second happened. That second is part of your life, Chris. The bridge is also part of your life tonight. But the second at the library — that's there too. And there are more seconds like that. You can't see them from the bridge. You can't see them from the heaviest place. But they're there."

"You don't know that."

"You're right. I don't know your future. I don't know what comes next for you. But I know that second at the library happened. And I know that three weeks of sleeping in your car happened. And I know that you are a person who survived three weeks and laughed at a library and drove to a bridge and called for help. And the calling is the thing, Chris. The calling is the thing that tells me that you are not done. The done person does not call. The done person does not hold the cable. The done person is not talking to me at 3 AM on the Hernando de Soto Bridge. The person who is talking to me is the person who is not done."

The words were not the protocol. The words were Delia. The words were the thing that Delia found in the space between the protocol's framework and the call's reality, the space where the human spoke, the space where the dispatcher became the person who was talking to another person on a bridge over a river in the middle of the night.

Forty minutes. The conversation had lasted forty minutes. Delia's voice had been speaking for forty minutes — not continuously, the conversation's rhythm including silences and pauses and the wind and the river, the conversation's tempo slow, the tempo of a crisis call, the tempo that did not rush, that allowed the time to do its work, the time the ally, the time working alongside the voice, the time and the voice the two tools that the dispatcher had.

"Chris, I want you to know something. I'm not going to tell you what to do. That's not my job. My job is to be here, on this line, talking to you, hearing you. What you do is your decision. It has always been your decision. Nobody can take that from you. But I want you to consider — just consider — stepping back from that railing. Not for me. Not for your mother. Not for anyone else. For the person who laughed at the library. For the person who survived three weeks. For the person who is strong enough to be standing on that railing right now, holding the cable, talking to a stranger. That person — that Chris — that person has more seconds ahead. I believe that."

Silence. The wind. The river. The cable in Chris's hand.

"I'm scared," Chris said. The words were small. The words were the first words that Chris had spoken that were not about the weight, not about the losses, not about the bridge. The words were about Chris. The words were the person speaking from inside the crisis, the person emerging from the crisis's narrative, the person saying the thing that the crisis had obscured: I am scared.

"I know you're scared," Delia said. "Being scared is okay. Being scared means you're alive and you know what's at stake. The scared is the part of you that wants to live, Chris. The scared is the part that's holding the cable."

Seven seconds of silence.

"Okay," Chris said.

"Okay?"

"I'm going to — I'm stepping back."

Delia heard it. She heard the sounds — the sounds of a body moving on the railing, the sounds of feet finding the footing, the sounds of the railing's metal and the body's weight shifting, the sounds of a person climbing back, stepping back from the edge, returning from the outside of the railing to the inside, from the air side to the bridge side, from the one hundred and five feet to the solid deck.

She heard the officer's voice — the officer who had been standing nearby, the officer who had been waiting, the officer who now approached and spoke and the speaking was the transition, the transition from the phone to the person, from the voice to the hands, from Delia's connection to the officer's connection.

"I'm on the bridge," Chris said. "I'm — I stepped back."

"You stepped back," Delia said. "You made that decision. That was you. That was your strength."

"The officer is here."

"Yes. The officer is going to help you. There are people who can help — with the housing, with the job search, with all of it. The officer can connect you. Will you let the officer help you?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I think — yeah."

"Chris, you did something brave tonight. Not coming to the bridge — that wasn't brave. Stepping back was brave. Talking to me was brave. Holding the cable was brave. You are brave."

"Thank you, Delia."

"Take care of yourself, Chris. There are more seconds. I promise you there are more seconds."

She disconnected. She logged the call. She typed the narrative — the narrative long, the narrative detailed, the narrative the record of forty-seven minutes on the Hernando de Soto Bridge, the record that would be reviewed by the supervisor and the department and the crisis intervention team, the record that documented the call's duration and the call's outcome: subject removed from railing, voluntary, no injuries, transferred to officer for crisis services referral.

She sat at Console 7. She placed her hands on the desk. The hands were not shaking. The hands were still. The stillness was the aftermath, the aftermath of forty-seven minutes of the most careful, the most deliberate, the most human work that the headset had ever required of her, forty-seven minutes during which the voice had been the instrument and the instrument had been played not for information-gathering or dispatch-coordination but for the oldest purpose that the human voice served: the keeping of another human alive through the sound of being heard.

She sat and the sitting was the thing. The sitting was the aftermath's shape. The sitting was the body in the chair in the room after the call, the body that had been the voice for forty-seven minutes and was now the body again, just the body, just a woman in a chair in a windowless room at 3:54 AM.

She did not cry. She did not shake. She sat.

Chris had stepped back. Chris had decided. The deciding was Chris's — the deciding was the person's, was always the person's, was the truth of dispatch that Delia had spoken to Chris on the bridge: your decision. The dispatcher's voice was there during the deciding but did not make the deciding. The voice was the connection. The saving, if it happened, was done by the person on the other end of the line.

Chris had saved Chris. Delia had been the voice.

The voice was enough. The voice was there. The voice said: I hear you. And the hearing was the thing. And Chris stepped back.

The phone beeped. The double tone.

Delia pressed the key.

"Memphis 911, what is the location of your emergency?"

The night continued. But something had happened on the bridge, something that existed now in the night's record, in the call log, in the CAD, in the narrative Delia had typed, in the space where the calls lived after the calls ended. Something that was forty-seven minutes and a cable and a voice and a kid laughing in a library and a step back from the railing.

Something that was Chris, alive. Chris, on the bridge deck. Chris, talking to the officer. Chris, alive.

The something sat in Delia's body alongside the other things — the counting and the breathing and the shaking and the silence. The something sat there and the something was different from the other things because the something had an ending, and the ending was: alive.

Alive.

The phone beeped. Delia answered. The night continued toward morning.