One fatality today. It was better than two.

That was the nature of the job. She listened in on the worst day of some stranger’s life, the aftermath always a few moments out of view.

Day by day, the bomb threats were increasing. Her shift alone had included nearly fifty bomb calls. Churches, schoolyards, and public parks. People targeted at random and explosives cheaply fashioned and set off with neither warning nor ransom. Some were false sightings. Others are little more than tasteless jokes. Only one call had been the real thing today. Only one call for her, at least. But once that first call came through, an avalanche of calls crushed the other operators.

A woman’s voice had started it all. Shaky, mumble-mouthed from shock. Background screams and stampeding footsteps drowned out her voice at the start of the call. It had taken a second for her words to finally come through.

“... Bomb…” She had wheezed, “A bomb’s gone off…! My son... My son is...!”

And then her voice submerged into the frantic panic of the scene. Her sobs stifled any other information she could have given.

Officers, ambulance, and fire brigade were swiftly sent to the woman’s location. Until they arrived, all she would do was listen and console. Although given the circumstances, it was doubtful that much comfort was felt. And then, emergency services had arrived. And then, the woman had hung up on her.

And that was that.

She wasn’t privy to the details of the investigation. That was someone else’s burden to carry. Someone else’s tragedy. Someone else’s problem. All she had to do was listen and direct. Listen and direct; always calm, collected, compassionate. Stay calm. Save the panic for the end of the shift; when the phone was hung up, leaving her stranded in a sea of unanswered questions. Cliffhangers floating eerily in the back of her mind.

Life as a 911 dispatcher was rough sometimes.

She scrunched her eyes shut. Standing on her doorstep at some ungodly hour in the morning. She had worked double overtime and still, rent would be tight this month, as was usual.

“Okay,” She thinks, fingers turn the key to the shoe-box of an apartment that she called home, “I’m going to open this door and when I do, I’m putting it all behind me. I’m going to scrounge up something for dinner, fall into bed, and let it all go. There’s nothing to be done about it now. I did my best and I may never know how it all turned out. That’s just how it goes.”

Was it a bad sign that she spouted this exact same speech every night after work?

No, it couldn’t be. She wasn’t part of the action. It’s not like she was out there charging into battle and saving lives. Truly, she was pathetic if she couldn’t handle sitting on the phone for a few hours every day.

It was pathetic.

She turned the knob and her apartment door swung open with a croak-ish creek.

Something is wrong.

Her apartment is blurry. Where there was one dinky coach, there are now two fuzzy ones, sailing like driftwood across her sightline. The ugly yellowing carpet shuffles back and forth like a rogue wave. The doorway splits in two, jostling each other as she whipped her head from side to side.

The numbers on her electric clock. What did they say?

She squints.

Lines and circles. Circle and lines. But no numbers? Were those numbers? Why couldn’t she read them? Only circles and lines & lines and circles.

Pinching the bridge of her nose, she blinks at the floor in rapid succession. That ugly yellow carpeting.

“Is there dust in my eyes…?”

Her eyes return to her apartment. It’s much the same until a sledgehammer of pain and misery smashes into the back of her head.

She’s going to puke.

Trying to do too much at once, she tumbles her way into the bathroom, all the while fumbling with the phone in her back pocket. Vomit dribbles between the fingers of her right hand as she dials those sacred three numbers with her left.

9-1-

~*~

She reawakens in the softest chair she’s ever had the pleasure of sitting in. All is calm. Her vision is straight. Her head doesn’t pound. Her stomach is settled.

But this isn’t her apartment. It isn’t a hospital either.

“Where...?”

An office of some sort. A study or a powder room with no colour in the soft carpeting between her toes. She looks around. There are furniture and wallpaper but she finds that nothing she sees locks into her memory, although she has the faintest feeling of contentment. The room is unclear even as her eyes remain sharp. Like the background of a memory, nothing in the room is in focus. As if the room itself is too unimportant to fully render in her mind.

It is only when she sees the drum table in front of her that she locks onto a single image. A pair of clasped hands resting on the wooden tabletop, thumbs tip-tapping nervously against dry, flaky knuckles.

She looks up.

It has her face. Its eyes are the same shade of dark chocolate, a little too far apart. Its mouth is opened slightly, and she sees that they have the same gap in their front two teeth. Its hands fidget in the same way that hers are fidgeting right now. Both she and it are nervous. About what, she isn’t sure.

She hesitates, “... Hi…”

What a stupid thing to say at a time like this. Not ‘What are you?’, not ‘Where am I?’, not ‘Why the hell do you have my face?’ No, just a dumbstruck ‘Hi’ underplaying the insanity of this moment. How stupid of her.

She opens her mouth, maybe to try again, but this thing beats her to it.

It leans across the table and gently takes hold of her hands.

“I’m sorry, Shirley. You’ve died today.”