“I… I can’t move my legs,” the six-year-old whispered to 911, holding back tears. What doctors uncovered after she was rescued left the entire room completely silent.

Most people think my job is about talking. They think it’s about shouting instructions or calming people down. They’re wrong. The job is about listening. It’s about hearing the negative space in a conversation—the catch in a breath, the background crunch of glass, the silence that screams louder than any siren.

It was a Tuesday morning in late October, the kind of deceptive autumn day where the sun is bright but provides no warmth. Outside, the maples of Silverwood were burning with gold and crimson leaves, dying beautifully. Inside, my world was reduced to three monitors and a headset.

The morning had been slow. A fender bender on Route 9. A neighbor dispute over a barking dog. Routine. The kind of calls that let your guard down. I had just lifted my mug—my third lukewarm coffee of the shift—to my lips when the headset chirped.

It wasn’t the sharp, urgent ring of a cell phone patch. It was the dull, heavy tone of a landline. Rare these days. Landlines usually meant the elderly, or the very poor.

“911, what’s your emergency?” I asked.

My voice was on autopilot—steady, professional, detached. It is a shield we build, layer by layer, year by year. You cannot survive this job if you let the panic in.

For a long, agonizing moment, there was no response.

I pressed the headset tighter against my ear. “911, this is a recorded line. Can you state your emergency?”

Nothing. Continue reading…