Vaccination - 01

by Phillip Tomasso

  Today, groups seemed to linger, almost mingling in the middle of the road. They moved at a sluggish pace. Dragging their feet, literally. Honking my horn did little to hurry them along. Gritting my teeth, I was forced to serpentine through the growing mass. Veering left and right, as if on a crazy course where orange pylons were replaced with humans.

  As I crossed Driving Park, I checked my rear-view mirror to see how cars behind me fared. One car had stopped. Bad idea. The crowd that meandered, converged. Not a good sign. Stopping is like asking for trouble, as if you had thrown down a challenge. Unless the guy driving is illegally packing, he might be in for some shit he never expected.

  I looked forward, watched where I was going. Someone would call work, 9-1-1. Someone always did. Not me. It wasn’t my business, and as far as I was concerned, the person in the stopped car brought any trouble received on himself.

  When I got to work, I’d type in the inner section, Lake and Driving, and see if a job was put in, check out what ended up happening, if anything. Figure by the time police are dispatched, the group will have dispersed anyway. They smelled the police. Knew when to scatter. Knew there would never be a witness. Not one who would talk, help the police out.

  Every generation comes to a point where they claim the end of the world has got to be just around the corner. I was in my mid-thirties, certain and confident it was just a matter of time. Things were coming to a head: rising gas prices, increased backward leaps in racism, segregation, political angst, infringement on nearly every point of the Constitution by the president, and just an overall sense of angry people. It was hard not to read the graffiti on the walls around us. If you couldn’t see it, if you didn’t sense it, then I guess you were just a blind motherfucker living under some rock.

  Aside from the amblers in the street, traffic itself seemed light. I zipped down Lake Ave to West and turned up the volume on the radio. Bass thumped. Singer screamed. Guitars like sirens blared. I nearly closed my eyes, soothed by the frantic chaos of rhythm exploding from my speakers.

  I lit a cigarette, inhaled deeply. As smoke filled my lungs, damaged arteries, messed up what was left of the muscle that was my beating heart, I smiled and exhaled slowly. A calm enveloping my senses. It wouldn’t last. The calm. One puff at a time. There really wasn’t any other way to continue, was there?

  Once I pulled into the parking lot at work, I felt it. The tightness in my chest. It did not come from smoking. It came from stress. I didn’t want to be here. I’m not sure I’d want to be at work at any job, but here? Completely unique kind of I-don’t-want-to-be-here sense of overbearing dread. Trust me.

  Political bullshit reigned. Backstabbing, lunch stealing, whining teenage-like drama, cliques, bullies (both peer-related, and supervisor enforced), hostile, harassing, sexual charged atmosphere. 9-1-1 was like a high school, with less mature employees. If they couldn’t find something to bitch about, they manufactured things. But who respected upper management?

  The place reminded me of that scene in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, where Wonka handed out the ever-desired Everlasting Gobstopper to the Golden Ticket toting winners. One for each kid. Of course, Slugworth had bribed each child with untold riches prior to the factory tour if they would part with their single piece of candy. Veruca Salt, stingy bastard that she was, tried to get two. Why? So she could keep one, and sell one. Bitch.

  Of course, I’m referring to the original. With Gene Wilder. Not the lame re-make with Depp. I like Depp. Don’t get me wrong. However, that rendition was totally spoiled by the single Umpa-Lumpa multiplied by however many in computer graphics. Awful.

  I shut the engine, and finally took a few seconds just to close my eyes.

  A futile attempt to obtain one last moment of solitude. It’s what I needed. Then, exhaling like a quick-deflating zeppelin, I headed in.

  Chapter Three

  My shift started at four. I checked out the schedule thumbtacked to the cork. I’m normally a dispatcher, sending fire trucks and ambulances to emergency calls. Police dispatchers worked the opposite side of the room. Between the two sets of dispatchers, sat telecommunications. The call takers. The 9-1-1 Operators. These are the unsung heroes of the place. The hub of the operation. They take call after call after belligerent call. I don’t know how they do it. Night after night. God bless them.

  Tonight, I had phones. It’s a blessing and a curse. As a dispatcher, I am required to answer phones once every five to six days. I’d rather answer phone calls tonight, in the middle of the week, than on a weekend. Luckily, this year, I had Halloween off. Phones on a holiday, any holiday, were the definition of a nightmare. Families spending time together never ended well. Families hated each other, I’ve learned. However, tradition forced them to break bread umpteen times a year.

  The curse, anyway, being that regardless of when, I sucked on phones. You never know what’s waiting on the other end of each ring. We’re trained to be ready. Graded on it, and disciplined from it.

  I rounded the corner. Allison Little. She sat at one of the four round tables in the break room. Flat screen TV was on, volume low.

  She was an all right girlfriend, seemed to love me. Which was cool. No complaint with that. For the most part, I tolerated her. Wish it could be more. After six months, should be more, I guess. Wasn’t though.

  Her shoulder length blonde hair looked cute when she wore it pulled back in a tight ponytail--as she wore it tonight. Her bright, blue eyes always looked happy. Can’t think of a better word. They Sparkled? They shined? The girl was twenty-seven. Never married. Still thought life was some peach, a glorified bed of roses, and she acted as if she’d just seductively wait in it for her knight to show up and validate some fabled fairytale story of her life.

  Nearly impossible at times not to grab and shake her by the shoulders, and yell, “Wake the fuck up!”

  “Got your tea.” I set the cup down in front of her.

  I kissed the top of her head and sat down next to her.

  “Thank you,” she said. I guess I liked the way she smiled, too. Coupled with those eyes, yeah, I’d say she was very attractive. Think what I hated most was talking to her on the phone. Took a while to get her to understand that. I had no problem texting and shit. I just didn’t want to talk. It’s a simple concept. Women just seem flustered by it. Thing was, I was single more than in a relationship since my divorce. So maybe it was me. Don’t know if that’s a question though. Might be more of a statement. Maybe it was me.

  I pulled the lid off my coffee. I picked up the sugar dispenser and dumped more into my cup, took a sip and smacked my lips. “That’s good.”

  “See the schedule?”

  “Phones.”

  “Me, too,” she said. “We’re in different pods, though.”

  “On purpose, no doubt,” I shrugged. We were used to it. Could make an unbearable night more bearable working in pods where you didn’t absolutely hate the people around you. See, that might improve morale, cause employees to feel valued. Just another way management was fucking with you. Everyone knew Allison and I were together. Some thought it was cool. Some simply displayed childish forms of jealousy. Dating co-workers wasn’t prohibited as much as it was frowned upon. Thing was, we spent long, often difficult hours together. Relationships formed. Couldn’t really be helped. Lot of people here were married. Many more dated, and it ended horribly. And, of course, there’s the large handful of married (to non-employees) who dated peers, or just slept with them. I couldn’t keep all the webs that linked everyone to everyone else straight. At some point, it just felt like Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, anyway. I mean, who didn’t love Bacon?

  I needed another cigarette or two. Allison didn’t smoke. Like talking on the phone, it took her a few weeks to learn not to give me shit about smoking. I smoked. She knew it when she met me. Magazines might give tips about how to change your man, but you know what? We don’t change.

  “I’ll be back,” I said, standing up. She smiled. Said nothin
g. Yeah, Allison was an all right girlfriend. I gave her a wink. “Did you see if we at least have breaks together or anything?”

  “I’ll check,” she said.

  “I got it. Look on my way out,” I said.

  Chapter Four

  The floor is set up in pods. About thirty-five people work per shift. There are four different telecommunication pods, with four to five phone stations in each, a fire and ambulance dispatch pod with six stations, and lastly, two police dispatch pods for nine employees. There are people for breaks and lunch reliefs, and in the center of it all, three to four supervisors per shift oversee the night.

  I logged on to the three terminals at my station, and plugged in my headset-jack. We’re several calls in queue.

  Allison stopped at the pod. “Putting me on the police side,” she said.

  “Lucky you.” She sauntered away. I shook my head. Lucky her.

  I made it through a handful of calls and sipped some water before answering the next.

  “Nine-one-one Center,” I said.

  “Send an ambulance, please. Send an ambulance.” It’s a female voice.

  I checked the left monitor. A landline. I have a name, address, and the number she’s calling from. I still have to ask and verify. “What’s your address, ma’am?”

  “No,” she yells. “No! Ah, God—he, he—”

  “Ma’am, what is your address?” I filled out the electronic job template on the center monitor and brought the caller’s information over with a keystroke. I heard crying, her sucking in gasps, and moaning. “Ma’am, I need your address.”

  It’s the nature of the job. Night after night. No one ever knows where they are. If they do, I can rarely understand a word being said—what with crappy cell phone companies, and piss-poor annunciation. Landline calls were a bonus. There were far less of those calls, as people made cells their primary. I didn’t have a home phone.

  “He’s sick. I mean, like really sick.” I think she laughed. One of those nervous, anxious laughs. Not like something was funny, but like she was close to losing it.

  “Where are you, ma’am?”

  “He told me his toe itched. That it was itchy. And then, he, I—he—with the knife, he just cut it off.”

  “The toe?” I asked. I cocked my head to one side, and pressed a finger to my ear. Nothing should surprise me, but I thought, I can’t be hearing this right.

  “Where is the knife now?”

  I’m closing in on two minutes since the start of the call. With no confirmed address, I’ll need a supervisor’s involvement. I hate that.

  “Ma’am—”

  She’d hung up.

  I clicked on a button to dial her number. On the template I typed: F (for female) STATES M (for male) CUT OFF HIS TOE—M POSS (for possible) INTOX—CLR H/U (for caller hung up). It’s all about short cuts and abbreviations. Get the job in, and the responders en route.

  I transferred the address information I did have to the right-hand monitor, used for mapping.

  On the third ring back, someone answered.

  “This is nine-one-one. We were disconnected,” I said.

  Open line. Screaming in the background. Sounded like things being knocked over. Grunts, more groans.

  A stifled scream?

  I type: OPEN LINE ON C/B—HEAR SCREAMING, AND POSS STRUGGLE.

  I had enough. I entered an event type for domestic dispute, and sent the job to the police dispatchers. I combined it with an ambulance job, who’ll stage in the area until police cleared them in to the scene. If the guy cut off his toe, he was going to need medical attention for sure. For all I knew, by now, the female might as well.

  The call disconnected. Dial tone hums.

  As always, another call to be answered waited. No need to call the female back a second time. Police had the job. Someone would go, sort things out.

  That training I told you about, taught us to move from call to call, not get hung up on what might, or might not be happening with the people involved in the last one. Not always easy to do. But after years employed here, it does become robotically automatic.

  “Nine-one-one Center,” I said, and looked up. There’s flat screen TVs everywhere with subtitles, but no sound, and the only thing we’re allowed to watch is news. I’m up to here with reality. News was the last thing I wanted to watch. Not to mention, reports mostly revolved around the H7N9 virus, and its vaccinations.

  “Hello, this is nine-one-one,” I said, again.

  Open line.

  Cell phone, this time. I re-bid the number—an attempt to triangulate the caller’s location. Naturally, it’s one of those cell phones you can get without a contract. They rarely work when doing this—trying to pin down the caller’s location. These cell providers basically provide customers with junk phones at an affordable rate and piggyback off the more reputable service providers’ towers.

  The pictometry map refreshed, hit off a cell tower. I rebid again, just to be sure, and received the same cell tower. No location revealed.

  The phones were useless.

  I didn’t hear anything in the background. After another thirty seconds, I release the call and try call back. It went to voice mail, and I disconnected. Nothing I could do. It was more than likely what we called a butt-dial. Happened all the time.

  Twenty calls in queue. What the fuck?

  # # #

  “Nine-one-one Center.”

  “They’re trying to get into my house!” Another female. On a cell. I rebid the call.

  “What is your address ma’am? Ma’am?” I looked at pictometry. I got a street address. I rebid again. Same house. Same street.

  “Please, please, send the police,” she whispers.

  “I need your address so I know where to send the police,” I explained. Pictometry is helpful, but not a hundred-percent accurate.

  She fed me an address. I’m surprised. She spoke slow and clear. I entered it. Verified it. It matched the mapping system. “Okay, tell me exactly what’s going on?”

  I filled out the text on the job template as she talked: 4 M’S TRYING TO BREAK INTO COMP’S HOUSE—BREAKING WINDOWS DOWNSTAIRS—COMP HIDING IN UPSTAIRS BEDROOM.

  I have enough information. I plugged in a burglary-in-progress event type and sent the job.

  Now I can supplement the job with additional information to keep responding police informed. “Do you know these men, ma’am?”

  “No.” The whisper is barely audible. “I’m under the bed now.”

  I typed that.

  “Did you see them?”

  “Yes.”

  “Were they white, black, or Hispanic?”

  “It was too dark. I couldn’t tell.”

  “Did you see what they were wearing?”

  “They were covered in, I think they, it looked like they were covered in blood,” she said.

  “Blood?” I added that. 4 M’S POSS COVERED IN BLOOD. I sent the supplemental information, and got ready to add more. “Can you still hear them?”

  “They broke my windows.”

  “Do you think they left?”

  “I’m not going down to check!”

  “No, ma’am. I don’t want you to do that!” I pulled up the actual job on the bottom-half of the screen. Two police cars are en-route. “I want you to stay where you are. Stay on the phone with me. What’s your name?”

  My job now, calm the caller. Reassure her. I don’t want to say police will be there any second. It doesn’t always work that way. “Ma’am, what’s your name?”

  “Kenya.”

  “Okay, Kenya, did these men have any weapons?”

  “I didn’t see them with anything, but I don’t know. I’m not sure.”

  “That’s fine. That’s okay. I’m just sharing all this information with the police, so they will know what to expect when they get there.”

  “Where are they?” She sounded worried. “I think they are inside the house.”

  **SHE THINKS THEY ARE IN THE HOUSE NOW** --sent
the supplement.

  “Does it sound like they’re downstairs?”

  “Can you hear them?” she asked.

  I heard it. Groaning. Moaning. It’s muffled. “Kenya?”

  “They’re outside my door.”

  I typed that. Sent it.

  “Kenya, I want you to stay very quiet.” I’m talking in a low voice, too. Hope that is calming. “But don’t hang up. Keep the phone on. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  We’re both quiet. I refreshed the job. Police on scene.

  “Kenya, the police are outside. Don’t move. Stay quiet.”

  I heard what had to be her bedroom door bang open. It’s Kenya I heard next, screaming. Giving away her hiding spot. “Let go of me!”

  “Kenya!”

  I jumped up, faced the police dispatchers. It’s a home invasion. “They have her!”

  The line is still open. Screams echoed in my headset. I can’t figure out the sounds. All I pictured is something like . . . pudding stirred in a bowl with a wood spoon, or mayonnaise into mac-salad. Wet, puckering. I have no idea what else describes the sounds I’m hearing.

  “Where are they?” I yelled.

  “They’re in. They’re in.” Allison had the job and was on her feet, too. “Police are inside the house!”

  “Police!” I heard from the headset.

  Swearing. Must be the cops.

  Kenya’s screaming had stopped.

  Gunshots.

  “Shots fired,” I yelled.

  Allison and I, normally, would have the attention of everyone. I mean everyone if we’d yelled “shots fired” like that across the floor.

  Tonight, no one noticed. Other employees had heads down, or were on their feet shouting, too. Only I was just noticing this. All the yelling. I’d been too caught up in Kenya’s call.