She had spent ten years in emergency dispatch in Springfield, Illinois, and by then, she could usually tell within the first few breaths whether a call was confusion, panic, intoxication, or the start of something that would sit heavy in her chest all week. That night had been ordinary until it wasn’t. The fluorescent lights hummed above her station, the coffee in her paper cup had gone cold, and two desks over, another dispatcher was talking somebody through a tire blowout on I-55.
Then Claire’s line lit up.
“911, what’s your emergency?”
For a beat, there was only breathing. Thin, unsteady breathing, the kind that made you imagine a small hand clamped over a mouth. Claire sat straighter in her chair, her fingers hovering over the keyboard.
Then the voice came.
A little girl, no older than eight or nine, whispered through tears, “Daddy’s snake… it’s so big and it hurts so much.”
