Robert sat in a leather chair with upholstery that was held together with silver duct tape. He leaned far back into the chair as he answered the phone.
“I’m not going to do this anymore,” a young girl’s voice said in a very matter-of-fact tone.
“Hi, my name is Robert. I’m listening.”
“Yeah, well listen to this: I’m not going to do this anymore.”
“Do what anymore?”
“Living.”
“Living, did you say?” Robert wasn’t sure he heard correctly because the music in the background was quite loud.
“Yes, living!” the girl shouted over the music.
Robert quickly sat up and leaned onto the table, picked up a pen and drew one of the paper pads towards him. In the last year, only one call had alerted him enough to call for emergency help. It was a college dorm party. A female student had mixed drugs and alcohol, fainted and wouldn’t respond. The partygoers had explained they were too afraid to call 911 and get caught so they called the crisis hotline instead. The students were quite disappointed when they found out the only thing Robert could do was to call 911. That had been the only real crisis he had ever responded to. And he never did find out what happened to that girl because after one quick 911 call, the crisis centre was completely removed from the situation.
Most of the calls the centre received were from lonely people that just needed someone to talk to. So when he heard someone didn’t want to live anymore, he sprang into action. First, he needed to find out how serious the call was since, unfortunately, the crisis centre was not immune to a good number of annoying prank calls.
“And why wouldn’t you want to live anymore?” he asked. And then the voice started singing into the phone something about being almost dead, and a drummer drumming as they carried her body. Her voice was a bit slurred and sounded as if maybe she had been drinking.
“You have a great voice. I’m not sure I’ve heard this song before. Who is it?” Robert asked.
“Red Hot Chili Peppers. And you couldn’t have heard it ‘cause it hasn’t been released yet. Okay, I’m going...Goooood bye. ” The voice sang the word ‘goodbye.’
“Why do you like it?” Robert quickly jumped in, hoping to get the caller to stay on the line.
He repeated the question.
“Why do you like it?”
There was no response, but he could still hear the music so he repeated the question once more.
“Just wanted to know why you like this song?” Again, there was no response, yet the music became louder. It seemed the caller had put the phone right on the speaker. Robert held the phone a little away from his ear but listened intently. The song did not have a sad sound to it at all. Despite the dark sounding lyrics and the words the girl had just sung, the music actually sounded rather upbeat and positive.
The music became more and more frenetic. It was building to a finish. Then, the girl started singing along with the repetitive lyrics, getting louder each time. He couldn’t make out the exact lyrics. But the words were something about someone being almost dead, someone being almost gone.
Was she also preparing for a big finish? he wondered. Robert didn’t know what to do. He rocked a little in his chair and then just tried singing along with the girl on the phone. Guessing the lyrics as he sang and singing loudest on the ones he could definitely make out. Almost dead. Almost gone.
They sang together in time with the lead singer, ending the last line with purpose, slowly giving each word its full meaning.
The song ended. Silence. Had she hung up? He panicked. No. There was a faint sound of breathing. He waited for a full thirty seconds, listening to her breathing, and then she broke the silence.
“Okay, I think I’m ready. Bye.”
“Hey, wait! What’s your name?” Robert almost yelled.
The caller’s voice was now a little more slurred, yet pointed. “What does it matter? I could tell you any...name...would you believe me?...No!...Wait...Okay, I could tell you...Yeah, I’m...No, I’ll tell you who I really am...I’m Lady Gaga.”
Robert looked at the receiver and scribbled down the caller’s number on the pad. He then drew the other phone closer to him in case he needed to make an emergency 911 call.
“Hi, Lady Gaga! It was great singing with you. Quite the privilege actually! Never in my lifetime would I have thought I would have the chance to do something like that: sing with Lady Gaga. So is anybody there with you tonight?”
“No, you think I’d be calling you if anyone was here?” Her voice changed. It got hard and angry.
Robert didn’t react; he knew enough to stay quiet in order to let the caller vent anything else she might want to.
“My goddamn family is never here, all right? Oh, did Brad have another big game tonight?” she said in a mocking tone. “Oh no, wait, maybe Suzy has another one of her freaking tutu recitals?” And then she screamed into the phone, “No...no, okay...No one’s here...No one’s ever here!”
The phone went dead.
Robert waited ten seconds to see if she would call back. Nothing! He glanced at the pad and called the number he had just written down.
It rang four times and then went to voicemail. “Hi, this is the Archer’s residence. No one is home at the moment, so could you please leave a message?”
Robert hung up and called again but got the same voicemail.
He stood up, wringing his hands together and paced behind the chair.
“How bad did she sound?” he said out loud.
I mean, she was singing...Yeah, but what was she singing? Death. She didn’t want to live anymore. And her voice sounded like maybe she had been drinking. Had she also taken some drugs?
He took a deep breath and made his decision. Picking up the phone, he hesitated for a second. Yes, he thought, then quickly jabbed the numbers 911. He quickly explained the circumstance to the man who answered and relayed his reasons for suspecting a potential suicide. Then, he hung up.
A restless energy surged inside him. He jumped up and stretched his legs, all the time staring at the phone. He wanted to call ‘Lady Gaga’ again, but he knew the procedure. The moment he gave her number to 911, it was out of his hands. Because of privacy laws, he was never going to know what happened with the girl named Lady Gaga.
Oh, my love. I felt so goddamn helpless! My words? My words were the only thing I had to try to save her. But what were they? My words...they were probably nothing more than a listless noise to her, like the sounds of someone annoyingly tapping their fingers on a table. And she just wanted me—the noise—to stop. And the other words of the 911 people, did they save her? Or at least stop her?
Sitting here tonight, looking at the legion of stars that seems to multiply each time I look up into the sky...I can’t help but wonder, who would want to leave this—this world of incredible, spontaneous, curious adventures? What is that moment really like, that precise moment when someone decides they are going to leave all THIS...and they choose to end their life? What is that moment like—the moment they actually decide to choose death?
Does their mind start to wander into some parallel world beyond all those stars? Do they think that after killing themselves, they are going to some death world where they will still be alive?
Are they choosing death because they are finished with living or do they do it because they think they will live on somewhere else...as someone new? Do they think life will be better in the death world? Or is this their way of trying to make their mark somehow? Somehow believing they are making the mark that they were unable to make when they were living. Perhaps by killing themselves they think they can create a new identity, one that will scream out to the rest of the universe, “SEE, none of you could ever see the true me. Well, LOOK, this is who I am!!! I am someone who decides to die...leave your world. YES, I’m in control and I choose death!” Or...do they do it just to spite the living, ‘cause they must know suicide always leaves a mark on those left behind?
To ch
oose death...is it because they don’t feel needed? Is that what can save us, feeling needed? Do we need to feel purpose to live? This girl, this Lady Gaga—a teenage kid that had wandered deep into those thoughts of hopelessness, thoughts of not living...What question is she asking? To live or not to live...Maybe the real question she was asking wasn’t “why do I want to kill myself?” but rather, “what would make me choose to live?”
Oh sorry, look, I’m climbing up that unanswerable mountain again!...Back to Nancy’s story. Well, two weeks later, I had another late Thursday at the Crisis Centre.
“Hi, my name is Robert. I’m listening.”
“What the hell did you have to call the police for?” a young girl’s voice questioned.
“Hi...” Robert said. “I’m sorry. Can I help you?”
“Why did you do that? You’re all the same. Now I know why you call this a crisis hot line. It’s because that’s what you do, you cause a fucking crisis!”
“Hi,” Robert felt a huge relief. It’s her again! She didn’t kill herself...didn’t choose the death world. She’s alive! “Oh, I’m so happy to hear from you!” he said.
“Why? Why? Now I’m...Now I’m—” and then she started crying. “That’s all they wanted, you know? Something to finally show them that their loser kid...” She paused and then started crying harder. Wet painful sobs.
Robert closed his eyes and nodded his head slowly in rhythm, listening to her as if he was rocking her in a cradle. He waited until the sobs and loud sniffles subsided and then said, “You have a nice voice, Lady Gaga.”
“Well, I don’t trust you...Why did you call the police?”
“I’m sorry, but you kind of left me no choice.”
“Is that all everybody ever does? Nancy cries, call a doctor. Nancy yells, give her some pills. Nancy says she’s hurting, call the police...How the hell are the police going to help me?”
“Is that your name, Nancy?”
“What do you think?” And suddenly her childlike pout abruptly switched to an impatient teenager’s voice. “Did you really think Lady Gaga was calling you?”
“No, I thought a sensitive, beautifully creative young girl was calling me and she didn’t want me to know her name.”
“How the hell can you know I’m beautifully creative?” she asked with slightly less attitude than before.
“That song, I looked it up after we spoke. It was a bit hard to find but I found it. I listened to it and thought probably only a creative person could really understand it.” Robert had found that song and once he read the lyrics he realized that maybe he was too quick to call for emergency help. “It’s called Brendon’s Death song, right?”
“Yeah,” she sniffed.
“Well, you know that line...about wanting to live and when I’m dead the Reaper will cry?”
“Well, that’s not the exact right words.”
“Okay, but it’s about death, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, that whole idea about the Reaper crying. Well, you see, I didn’t get it right away.”
“So what did you get?”
“Well, I think it means that if a person lives a life so great, when Death finally comes to take them, it would make Death cry because...because Death would have to take them from such a great amazing life, right? You see, I think most people hearing all this stuff about Death and then the Reaper, well, most people probably think it’s a depressing song about dying. But I think creative people—well, they listen in a different way. And they probably understand that the song was actually meant to be positive and not really about death at all, but more about celebrating a wonderful life.”
Robert waited for her to comment but all he could hear were more sniffles.
“So, I see now. It’s positive song. I’m sorry I didn’t get it before...I guess I didn’t really listen that good.”
“Well.”
“Well what?” Robert was puzzled.
“It’s not you didn’t listen good, it’s well. You didn’t listen well.”
Robert chuckled a little at having his grammar corrected.
“Haha...yeah, I’m sorry about that. How about we start again, okay?”
Suddenly, Nancy erupted into loud gasping sobs. “That’s how...how I feel...every day, every day...I just feel like I want to start all over again.”
And that was how I got to know Nancy Archer. We did start over again and what I learned in the next hour about this absolutely lost sixteen-year-old girl was really difficult to listen to. But, you know, love, it made me realize that this choice to leave the probation office and a steady paycheck to start my own work—following this passion of mine—trying to help young people...It definitely was the right choice. I’m meant to be here! Thank you darling, for supporting me, for helping me live such a rewarding life...and I remember thinking that as I listened to her cry over the phone. Thank God, she is still here to talk to.
Robert knew that was the first step towards hope.
Nancy Archer came from an affluent family. Her father owned a very successful head-hunter company and her mother was high up in the ranks at the largest pharmaceutical company in the country. Both had to travel extensively. Her nineteen-year-old brother, Brad, was on a university basketball scholarship and her sister Suzy, at fifteen, had already been chosen as a full-time apprentice for a professional ballet company in the city.
Nancy, Brad and Suzie were brought up by many full-time nannies and Nancy had always felt the nannies favoured her brother and sister over her. And now, at sixteen, with her brother and younger sister already on career paths, she felt extreme alienation from her parents because she didn’t know what she wanted to do with her life. So, she started slowly carving her identity into her body with a razor and became the family’s problem child. She had been cutting herself for the last year, but the experimentation with drugs and alcohol started when she was fourteen.
“Nancy, did you say that every day you wish you could just start all over again?”
“Yeah, kind of wish...Well, not just that day but my whole life. I just want to erase it and start all over again.”
“Do you ever laugh?”
“Yeah. Of course.”
“No, I mean out loud...like, as if your whole body is laughing and you couldn’t stop it even if you tried.”
Robert was sure Nancy had just smiled. He heard her make that oh-yeah-I-remember sound and then she spoke with such a happy animated spark.
“Yeah, well, there was this one time my mom made this treasure hunt for my birthday and...and she made these clues. God, they were so funny. I couldn’t believe she took the time to do that—all that—for me.”
But then in an instant, Nancy’s happy sound abruptly vanished and her critical voice again appeared. “But she never did that again.”
“Okay, so...do you want to erase that birthday celebration, as if it never happened?”
“No, but what’s the use of having something fun if you never get it again? If you can’t even hope that it will ever exist again?”
Robert smiled. This girl was quite clever. He wasn’t sure how to answer her question so he did something Monique had taught him. His wife had gone to one of her company’s training workshops and she learned a technique called the Five Whys. It usually worked when someone came to you with a problem that they believed was unsolvable. The why questions usually wouldn’t fix the problem, but they might get you closer to why the problem existed. Every time the person gave an answer, you were to just ask them why. And by repeatedly asking the question “why?” you could peel away the layers of symptoms and get to the root cause of the problem. So Robert started.
“Why can’t you hope it will ever happen again?”
“Because I know it won’t!” Nancy quickly answered.
“Why are you so sure it won’t ever happen again?”
“‘Cause my mom is too busy now.”
“Why do you think your mom’s too busy now?”
“She�
��s always too busy for me!”
“Why do you think she’s too busy for you?”
“Because she doesn’t care about me anymore, okay?!” Nancy’s voice sounded exasperated, as if she were hoping the questions would just stop.
Ah, the root of the problem was exposed! There was a long pause. Robert waited, hoping Nancy heard what she had just said. It was simple. Every child wants the same. SHE wanted to be cared for by her mother!
And then Nancy surprised him and asked,
“Aren’t you going to ask me why she doesn’t care about me anymore?”
“You know, Nancy, I once learned that sometimes when we have a question we don’t know the answer to that it often helps to ask a better question.”
“Like what?”
Robert was silent so she asked it again with even more impatience.
“No, really, like what?”
Robert stayed silent.
“Are you going to talk or what?”
“I’m sorry, Nancy, I was hoping you could find the better question since it’s your question, not mine.”
“Well, I don’t know any better questions about why my mother doesn’t care about me anymore. Do you?”
“No...but...Okay, do you want your mom to care for you?”
“Duh, yeah...Who doesn’t want their mom to care about them?”
“That’s a good question, Nancy. Who doesn’t want their mom to care about them?”
“I don’t know...Crazy people, bad people...killers!”
“And are you any one of those?”
After a little pause, Nancy said quite loudly, “No, what the hell do you think?”
“Well, Nancy, I think you want and need your mom to care about you, right?”
“Yeah...okay, so...?”
“And I’m pretty sure your mom needs you to care about her. So, tell me, when was the last time you showed your mom you cared about her?”
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