But it wasn’t an empty silence. It was a living silence. I could hear the wet, rhythmic sound of breathing. It was shallow, ragged, and terrified. It sounded like a small animal trapped in a wall.
“Hello?” I softened my tone, dropping the authoritative dispatcher voice and slipping into something warmer, something maternal. “I can hear you breathing. You don’t have to be scared. My name is Helen. Can you tell me what’s wrong?”
A small voice, fragile as spun glass, finally whispered back. It trembled so violently the vibration seemed to rattle my own teeth.
“There’s… there’s ants in my bed… and my legs hurt.”
I frowned, glancing at my screen. The trace was triangulating, bouncing off old copper wires. Ants? Kids called about strange things sometimes. Nightmares. Imaginary monsters. But the tone wasn’t right for a nightmare. This was the tone of visceral, waking fear.
And then, she said the words that stopped my heart cold.
“I can’t close them.”
My hand froze in mid-air. The air in the dispatch center seemed to drop ten degrees. “I can’t close my legs.”
In twenty-two years, you learn to categorize calls instantly. That phrase—spoken by a child—usually points to one specific, horrific category of trauma. My stomach turned over. I felt a flash of nausea, a sudden, violent urge to reach through the phone line and pull the child to safety.
“My name is Mia,” the whisper came again. A wet sniffle followed. “I’m six.” Continue reading…
