The Shooting

Night Shift

Chapter 7: The Shooting

The call came at 11:42 PM. The double tone. The queue. The key.

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

The voice on the other end was not speaking. The voice was screaming. Not words — sound, the sound that a human body produces when the body's nervous system has overwhelmed the body's language, when the adrenaline has flooded the brain and the brain has abandoned the higher functions, the functions of grammar and syntax and vocabulary and the organized production of meaning, and has retreated to the lower functions, the functions of the animal, the functions that produce noise as a response to danger, the noise that is not communication but expression, not language but reflex, the scream that says nothing and says everything, that says: something terrible has happened and I am here and I am not able to tell you what it is because the telling requires a calm I do not have.

Delia waited. She waited one second, two seconds, the seconds precise in her mind because the training had taught her to count the seconds, to give the caller seconds to exhaust the initial wave of panic, to let the scream crest and break before introducing the voice, the dispatcher's voice, the voice that would enter the caller's ear and begin the work of bringing the caller back from the scream to the words, from the noise to the information, from the animal to the human who could answer questions and provide the location and describe the emergency so that the system could respond.

"I need you to take a breath," Delia said. "I'm here to help you. I need you to take a breath and tell me where you are."

The screaming continued. It was a woman. The scream had the pitch and the timbre of a woman, though Delia knew from experience that the scream was not a reliable indicator of anything — not gender, not age, not severity — because the scream was the thing that all demographics shared, the scream the universal human response to the unbearable, the sound that a man made and a woman made and a child made and an elderly person made when the thing they were witnessing exceeded their capacity to witness it and the exceeding produced the sound, the sound that dispatchers heard and had to work through, had to cut through, had to reach past to find the person behind the scream, the person who had information, the person who could answer the questions that would save the life.

"Ma'am, I need you to listen to me. I need you to take a breath. Can you hear me?"

A break in the screaming. A gasp. A sound that was between a scream and a word, the sound of a person trying to speak, the vocal cords attempting to produce language while the body was still producing noise, the two impulses competing for the same instrument, the mouth and the throat caught between the scream and the sentence.

"He — somebody — oh God — he's been shot, he's on the ground, there's blood —"

The words came in fragments. The fragments were the information, the information arriving not in the orderly sequence that the protocol preferred but in the disordered sequence that crisis produced, the sequence determined not by the protocol's logic but by the caller's perception, the caller seeing the scene and reporting it in the order that the scene presented itself to the caller's eyes, the blood first because the blood was the most visible, the ground because the person was on the ground, the shot because the shot was the cause, the fragments assembling in Delia's mind into a picture: a person shot, on the ground, bleeding.

"Ma'am, I need the address. Where are you right now? What street are you on?"

"I don't — I'm on — it's Lamar, I'm on Lamar Avenue —"

"What is the nearest cross street? Can you see a cross street or an address on a building?"

The ANI/ALI had provided a cell tower location — the 2700 block of Lamar Avenue, a commercial stretch, gas stations and fast-food restaurants and strip malls, the geography of the corridor that ran southeast from midtown to the airport, the corridor that Delia knew from the map and from the calls, from the dozens of calls that had come from Lamar Avenue over the six years of her career, the corridor a recurring location in the dispatch log, a place that generated calls the way certain places generate calls — the intersections and the corridors and the blocks that appear in the CAD system again and again, the addresses that the dispatchers recognize, the geography of trouble.

"I see — there's a sign — Airways, it's near Airways, I think —"

"Lamar and Airways?"

"Yes — please send somebody, he's bleeding, oh God, he's bleeding so much —"

Delia typed. Lamar Avenue near Airways Boulevard. She coded the call: shooting, person down, active bleeding. She dispatched police and EMS simultaneously — Code 3, lights and sirens, emergency response. She keyed the radio.

"All units, shooting at Lamar Avenue near Airways Boulevard, one person down with gunshot wound, active bleeding, Code 3 response. EMS responding."

The radio acknowledged. Units responded — call signs clicking in, the sound of the system activating, the sound of police cars and ambulances changing direction, changing speed, the officers and the paramedics receiving the information and acting on it, the action the purpose, the purpose the response, the response the thing that the dispatcher initiated with the words on the radio, the words that traveled from Delia's microphone to the antenna on the roof to the radios in the cars to the ears of the people who would drive to Lamar and Airways and do the things that needed to be done at the scene of a shooting — the things that Delia could not do from Console 7, the things that required presence, physical presence, the presence of hands and equipment and the medical knowledge that the paramedics carried and the tactical knowledge that the officers carried and the capacity for action that the field responders carried, the capacity that the dispatcher did not carry, the dispatcher carrying instead the voice, only the voice, the voice and the questions and the protocol and the connection.

"Ma'am, what is your name?"

"Tamika — Tamika Davis — please, is somebody coming?"

"Help is on the way, Tamika. Police and an ambulance are responding right now. I need you to stay with me. Can you do that?"

"Yes — yes —"

"Good. Now I need to ask you some questions so I can help the person who's been shot. Can you see the person?"

"He's right here. He's on the sidewalk. He's — there's so much blood —"

"Is the person conscious? Are they awake? Are their eyes open?"

"I — I don't — his eyes are — they're kind of open but he's not — he's not talking, he's not moving —"

"Is the person breathing? Can you see their chest moving?"

A pause. Delia heard the sounds of movement — Tamika moving closer to the person on the sidewalk, the sounds of the scene entering the headset, the ambient noise of Lamar Avenue at 11:42 PM, the traffic and the distance and the particular acoustic quality of a phone call made outdoors, the quality that was different from an indoor call, the outdoor call carrying the width of the world in its background noise, the world that was the street and the night and the city around the scene.

"I don't think he's breathing. Oh God. Oh God, I don't think he's breathing."

The protocol engaged. The tree opened to the branch: unconscious, not breathing. The branch led to the determinant: Echo. The branch led to the instruction: CPR. The protocol said: initiate dispatcher-assisted CPR. The protocol said: use the script. The protocol said: count.

But first the protocol said: assess. Assess the scene. Assess the danger. Assess whether the caller could safely provide CPR, because CPR required the caller to be near the patient and the patient was a shooting victim and the shooting was recent and the shooter might still be present and the caller's safety was the dispatcher's responsibility — not legally, not technically, but morally, practically, essentially, because the dispatcher who instructed a caller to kneel beside a victim on a street where a shooter might still be standing was the dispatcher who might be instructing the caller to die.

"Tamika, listen to me. Before I give you instructions, I need to know: is the scene safe? Did you see the person who did the shooting? Are they still in the area?"

"I don't — I heard the shots, I was at the gas station, I heard the shots and I came over and he was just — on the ground — I didn't see anybody. I don't see anybody. I think they drove off. I heard a car, like tires, right after the shots."

"Okay. Good. You said you heard the shots from the gas station. How many shots did you hear?"

"I don't know. Three? Maybe four? I don't know. It happened fast."

"Okay. Tamika, I'm going to give you instructions to help this person. I need you to listen carefully and do exactly what I tell you. Can you do that?"

"I — I don't — I've never —"

"You can do this. I'm going to walk you through it. I'll be right here with you the whole time. Help is on the way. But right now, you are the help. You are the closest help this person has. Okay?"

"Okay. Okay."

The words "you are the help" were not in the protocol. The protocol did not say "you are the help." The protocol said: "I'm going to tell you exactly what to do next. Listen carefully." But Delia had learned, over the years, over the CPR calls, that the protocol's words were sometimes insufficient for the moment, that the moment required a bridge between the protocol's instructions and the caller's willingness to follow them, and the bridge was the thing that Delia built with her voice, the thing that connected the caller's terror to the caller's capacity, the thing that said: you can do this, I believe you can do this, and the believing was the bridge, and the bridge was the difference between a caller who knelt down and put hands on a chest and a caller who stood frozen and could not move and waited for the ambulance that was seven minutes away, and in seven minutes a person without CPR is a person whose brain is dying, the oxygen depleting, the cells expiring, the damage accumulating with each second that the heart does not pump, each second that the blood does not flow, each second that the counting does not happen because the caller has not started because the protocol's words were not enough to overcome the caller's fear.

"Tamika, I need you to kneel down next to the person. Can you do that?"

"Yes — I'm — I'm kneeling."

"Good. I need you to place the heel of your hand — the bottom part of your palm — on the center of his chest. Right between the nipples. Can you find that spot?"

"There's — there's blood on his shirt — I can't —"

"That's okay. You can put your hand right on the shirt. It doesn't matter about the blood. Find the center of his chest and put the heel of your hand there."

"Okay. Okay, I have it."

"Good. Now put your other hand on top of the first hand. Lace your fingers together. Keep your arms straight — don't bend your elbows. And push down hard. Push down at least two inches. I'm going to count with you. Push every time I say a number. Ready?"

"I don't know if I can —"

"You can. You are doing this. Ready?"

"Yes."

"Push. One and two and three and four and five and six and seven and eight and nine and ten and eleven and twelve and thirteen and fourteen and fifteen..."

Delia counted. The counting was the thing. The counting was the rhythm, the metronome, the steady pulse of numbers that Tamika followed with her hands, the hands pressing down on the chest of a person Tamika did not know, a person whose name Tamika did not know, a person who was lying on the sidewalk on Lamar Avenue near Airways Boulevard at 11:42 PM on a Tuesday in October with a gunshot wound and no pulse and the only thing between the person and death was a bystander who had been at the gas station and heard the shots and come over and called 911 and was now kneeling on the sidewalk with her hands on a stranger's chest while a voice in her ear counted.

"...sixteen and seventeen and eighteen and nineteen and twenty and twenty-one and twenty-two and twenty-three and twenty-four and twenty-five and twenty-six and twenty-seven and twenty-eight and twenty-nine and thirty. Stop. Tilt the head back — put one hand on the forehead and lift the chin with the other hand. Pinch the nose closed. Give two breaths — put your mouth over the person's mouth and blow until you see the chest rise. Two breaths."

She heard Tamika breathing. She heard the breaths — the forced exhalations, the sound of a woman blowing air into a stranger's lungs, the sound traveling through the phone from Tamika's mouth to the stranger's mouth to Delia's ear, the sound the evidence that the protocol was working, that the chain was holding, that the links were intact: voice to ear to hands to chest, voice to ear to mouth to lungs, the chain that the system created, the chain that linked the dispatcher to the patient through the caller, the chain that was the most remarkable thing that the emergency communication system did, the thing that turned a phone call into a medical procedure, the thing that turned a bystander into a first responder, the thing that turned a dispatcher into a physician's proxy, the thing that saved lives at a distance, the distance of a microphone and an earpiece, the distance that was no distance at all when the counting was happening and the hands were pressing and the breaths were given.

"Good. Now back to compressions. Same spot, hands on the center of the chest, push hard, push fast. One and two and three and four and five..."

She counted. She counted the way she had counted seventeen times before, the way the protocol instructed, the way the training prepared her, the counting steady, the counting relentless, the counting the thing she gave to Tamika and through Tamika to the person on the sidewalk, the counting the rhythm that kept the blood moving through the body that could not move it on its own, the counting the substitute for the heartbeat, the external heartbeat provided by a woman's hands directed by a woman's voice transmitted through a phone line from a console on Poplar Avenue to a sidewalk on Lamar Avenue, the distance between the two points the distance of the city, the distance that the system bridged with technology and the protocol bridged with words and the voice bridged with the counting.

Tamika was crying. Delia could hear it — the crying underneath the effort, the tears that came while the hands worked, the tears that Tamika did not stop to wipe because the hands were on the chest and the counting was continuing and the stopping would mean the end of the compressions and the end of the compressions would mean the end of the blood flow and the end of the blood flow would mean the end, and Tamika knew this without being told, knew it in the body's knowledge, the knowledge that the hands on the chest were the thing, the only thing, and the thing could not stop.

"...twenty-eight and twenty-nine and thirty. Stop. Two breaths."

Tamika breathed. Tamika blew air into the stranger's lungs.

"Good. Back to compressions. You're doing great, Tamika. You're doing exactly right. Help is almost there. One and two and three..."

Delia monitored the map. The units were converging — the police units approaching from two directions, the EMS unit from the south, the icons moving through the streets toward the dot that was Lamar and Airways, the dot that was a person on a sidewalk, the dot that was Tamika's hands on the person's chest, the dot that was the place where the system's response would arrive and the paramedics would take over and the caller's hands would come off the chest and the dispatcher's counting would stop and the call would end, the call that had begun with a scream and would end with the sound of sirens and the sound of professional voices and the sound of equipment and the sound of the scene being taken over by the people who were trained to take it over, the paramedics and the officers, the people who did the things that required presence, the things that the dispatcher could not do from Console 7.

Three minutes. The units were three minutes away. The three minutes were the gap — the gap between the call and the response, the gap that the counting filled, the gap that Tamika's hands filled, the gap that was the most dangerous period in the patient's timeline, the period when the patient was without professional help and the only help was a bystander directed by a dispatcher, the amateur directed by the system, the system's reach extending through the phone line to the sidewalk where the amateur knelt and pressed and breathed and counted along with the voice in her ear.

"...eleven and twelve and thirteen and fourteen..."

"Is he going to be okay?" Tamika said, the words coming between compressions, the words squeezed out between the efforts, the question that every caller asked and that no dispatcher could answer honestly because the honest answer was: I do not know. The honest answer was: the statistics say that out-of-hospital cardiac arrest with bystander CPR has a survival rate of approximately ten percent, and the statistics do not account for the gunshot wound, the blood loss, the particular damage that the bullet did to the particular body of the particular person on the sidewalk, the statistics a framework that the individual case might confirm or might defy, and the dispatcher did not know which, would never know which, would disconnect from this call and log it and take the next call and the outcome would travel through the system without reaching Console 7, the outcome a fact that existed in the world without existing in Delia's knowledge.

"You're giving him the best chance, Tamika. You're keeping his blood moving until the paramedics get there. Keep pushing. Fifteen and sixteen and seventeen..."

The answer was not an answer. The answer was a redirection — a redirection from the outcome, which was unknown, to the action, which was known, the action that Tamika was performing, the action that was the only thing either of them could do, the dispatcher counting and the caller pressing, and the doing was the thing, the doing was the response to the question, the doing was the answer that the protocol provided when the outcome-answer was unavailable: do the thing. Keep doing the thing. The doing is the answer.

The sirens became audible through the phone. Delia heard them in her headset — faint, then louder, the sound traveling through Tamika's phone from the street to the headset, the sirens the signal that the units were arriving, that the gap was closing, that the professional help was approaching the amateur help, the two helps about to merge at the location.

"Tamika, the ambulance is almost there. Keep going. Twenty-two and twenty-three and twenty-four..."

"I see them. I see the lights."

"Good. Keep going until the paramedics tell you to stop. Don't stop until they tell you."

"Okay."

"...twenty-seven and twenty-eight and twenty-nine and thirty. Two breaths."

Tamika breathed. The sirens were loud now, the sound filling the phone, filling the headset, the sound of the arrival.

The radio crackled. "EMS 47 on scene, Lamar and Airways."

"Police 214 on scene."

Delia heard the sounds of the scene through Tamika's phone — the doors opening, the voices of the paramedics, the professional voices joining the amateur voice, the paramedics approaching, the equipment being brought, the organized chaos of a medical team arriving at a shooting scene, the chaos organized by training and protocol and the particular discipline of people who do this work, the work of arriving at scenes where people have been shot and performing the medical procedures that the scene requires while the scene is still a crime scene and the police are still securing it and the bystander who has been doing CPR is still kneeling with her hands on the chest.

"Ma'am, we've got him." A voice — not Tamika's, a new voice, a paramedic's voice. "You can let go."

Tamika let go. Delia heard the letting go — not as a sound but as a change in the phone's ambient noise, the change that happened when Tamika stood up and stepped back and the hands that had been on the chest were in the air and the counting stopped and the CPR stopped and the paramedics took over and the caller's role ended and the dispatcher's role ended and the system's response shifted from the remote to the present, from the phone to the scene, from the voice to the hands, the real hands, the trained hands, the hands with the equipment and the medications and the defibrillator and the IV and the everything that the paramedics carried and that the bystander did not carry and that the dispatcher could not provide, the everything that arrived with the ambulance, the everything that was the system's full response, the response that the call initiated and the dispatch activated and the counting sustained until the response arrived.

"Tamika," Delia said. "The paramedics have him. You did great. You did everything right."

"Is he — will he —"

"The paramedics are going to take care of him now. You gave him the best chance you could. The officers will want to talk to you about what you saw and heard. Are you okay? Are you hurt?"

"I'm — I have his blood on my hands."

The sentence entered Delia's headset and traveled through the earpiece and into her mind and the sentence was not a medical report, was not a status update, was not information that the protocol required or the CAD log recorded. The sentence was the human thing. The sentence was the thing that lived below the protocol, below the dispatch, below the system, the thing that was a woman standing on a sidewalk at midnight with a stranger's blood on her hands, the blood that had been in the stranger's body and was now on the woman's hands, the blood the evidence of the emergency, the blood the residue of the crisis, the blood the thing that Tamika would wash off in a gas station bathroom or at home or wherever she went after the officers talked to her, the blood the thing that would come off the hands but would not come off the memory, the blood the thing that Tamika would carry the way Delia carried the calls, the way anyone who participates in a crisis carries the crisis, the crisis not an event but a weight, the weight not a metaphor but a physical thing, a thing that sits in the body, in the hands, in the voice, in the silence after the call.

"The officers will help you," Delia said. "Is there someone I can call for you? Someone who can come be with you?"

"My sister. She lives — she's close."

"What's her number? I'll have someone reach out to her."

Tamika gave the number. Delia noted it. She would relay it to the officers on scene — a small thing, a logistical thing, a thing that the protocol did not require but that the person inside the protocol provided, the person who heard "I have his blood on my hands" and responded not with protocol but with humanity, with the gesture of calling a sister, the gesture that was outside the protocol but inside the job, inside the human job that the protocol could not fully contain.

"Tamika, you did an incredible thing tonight. I want you to know that."

"I just — I did what you told me."

"You did more than that. You stayed. You helped. The officers will talk to you now. Take care of yourself."

"Thank you."

Delia disconnected. She logged the call. She typed the narrative: shooting, Lamar Avenue near Airways Boulevard, one victim, gunshot wound, bystander-initiated CPR with dispatch assistance, EMS on scene, police on scene, bystander statement pending. She typed the disposition: Code 4 for dispatch purposes, the scene now in the hands of the field responders, the dispatch complete, the call complete, the voice's work done.

She sat at Console 7. Her hands were on the keyboard. Her hands were steady. Her hands had not done the compressions — her hands had typed while Tamika's hands compressed, her hands had entered data while Tamika's hands pushed blood through a stranger's body, her hands clean while Tamika's hands were covered in blood, the disparity the dispatcher's particular condition, the condition of being essential and distant, of being the voice that directed the action without performing the action, of being present in the call and absent from the scene, of counting the compressions without feeling the chest yield under the heel of the hand.

Marcus looked at her. He had heard the call — not the details, not the words, but the tone, the cadence, the particular rhythm of a CPR call, the counting, the ten minutes of counting that every dispatcher on the floor recognized because the counting was distinctive, was the sound of the protocol's most urgent branch, the sound that meant a person was dying and a dispatcher was counting and a caller was pressing and the chain was active. Marcus looked at her and the look said: I know. The look said: I have counted. The look said: the counting stops and the call ends and the next call comes and the counting lives in the body and the body holds it and you hold the body and you take the next call.

Delia took the next call.

The phone beeped. The double tone. The queue. The key.

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

A noise complaint. Loud music. Midtown. Delia took the information. She dispatched. She logged. She moved on.

The moving-on was the discipline. The discipline was the work. The work was the shift. The shift continued. Lamar Avenue continued — the scene continuing without Delia, the paramedics working, the patient transported or not transported, alive or not alive, the outcome existing in the world while Delia sat at Console 7 and took the next call and the next call and the next call, the calls filling the shift, the shift filling the night, the night filling the body, the body holding the counting and the screaming and the blood on Tamika's hands and the voice that said "is he going to be okay" and the answer that was not an answer and the sirens and the letting go, holding all of it, holding it the way the bank holds the river, the bank that does not move, the bank that the water flows past, the bank that stays while the river goes, the bank that is solid while the river is the river.

The phone beeped.

Delia answered.