PULSE Magazine | August 2018 Issue

We’ll get that text, because there is a victim at that point. There’s somebody who has been assaulted who needs an ambulance. [If the texter is still] in danger, we would say, ‘Stay silent, out of sight. Text me when you can.’ And we ask, ‘Do you feel like you can get out safely?’ When you’re on a call about a violent crime, what kind of decisions do you need to make as the call taker? All I have is my voice, the way that I say words and the words I choose. My timeframe is short. If I’m a field medic, yes, I have to act fast, to stop a bleed or to do whatever it is I’m doing. But I’m the one doing the acting. Over the phone, I have to convince some- one else to do the acting, and I have seconds to get their address and location to send an ambulance. I have just a minute or two to provide an entire range of instructions before somebody shows up to take over. I’ve got under a minute to try to control an otherwise hysterical person and get them to do what I ask them to do. What is that like for you? The amount of energy it takes to tailor my words and my tone to try to get somebody to do that is exhausting [especially] when it doesn’t work and I can’t reach them, or they are aggressive or abusive in their response to our attempts to get them to do it. So when we’re doing that 40 or 50 times in a 12-hour shift, over time that ends up being incredibly stressful. Are there times when you get a call while a violent crime is taking place? [I’ve heard of instances where] a call taker is on the line…and the [caller] is screaming, ‘Hey this person is being stabbed, come hurry, quick, please get here,’ and we can hear the assault taking place. It turns from screaming, to crying, to not crying as much, to silence. So we’re not just hearing the assault taking place, but hearing it transition from an assault in progress to what will turn into a murder investigation. It’s hard to even imagine what that’s like for the person getting that call. It is absolute helplessness. The only way I can try to project that to somebody else is, imagine standing behind a glass window, and watching somebody be assaulted—be it sexually assaulted, physically assaulted, emotionally assaulted or being murdered. And you have to watch it—with your ears, because we’re listening to it. You have to ob- serve it. Your ability to change the course of that is limited to your caller’s ability to comply with your instructions. In a situation like that, if we’re speaking to a bystander, by telling them to intervene, we’re [potentially] creating a second patient, or a third patient. We really just have to observe this process, which is one of the worst feelings in the world. How do you handle a call from someone who is about to be attacked? For a lot of these, we’re not even part of the call. Law enforcement deals with the ini- tial contact with 911. For our local system, if you text or call 911, it will be the Austin Police Department or Travis County Sherriff’s Department that says, ‘Do you need, po- lice, fire, or EMS?’ If the response is, ‘I don’t know. I think I’m about to be shot, or stabbed,’ that’s probably not going to make it to us in the first place. If we do receive something like that, our goal is to find out if someone there needs an ambulance. If they don’t need the ambulance or it hasn’t happened yet, then it’s not in our wheel- house.

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