by Lirpa Yadsloof

Created on: April 16, 2008   Last Updated: October 31, 2008

This story is a true story. Some things have been omitted or changed to protect confidentiality.

I realize this is in the category of losing a loved one, and I think it's appropriate. I lost my dad in 2000 to a sudden illness, and although this is not his story, my father is the reason I was so deeply affected by another's experience about love and the fear of losing a loved one.

The night my understanding of empathy changed forever was a steady night at the 911 center that I work for. We were at full staff, and the room was lively.

For those who have never been on the dispatch floor of a busy Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP), otherwise known as a 911 center, it's a feeling that you might have a hard time describing. As a visitor, you might first be struck by the fact that everyone is doing something different. All the dispatchers seated at consoles are situated the same way, five large screens in front of them, glaring bright colors highlighted at different places. Everyone is wearing a headset. The room is at once dark and well-lit, due to the halo of computer light and personal lamps surrounding each consoles' five foot radius. One dispatcher might be reading a magazine, another working a crossword puzzle, although usually strangers on the floor will prompt a higher level of alertness. Another one is talking loudly into the headset, saying, "Your cell phone is cutting out sir, can you please repeat your location?" Yet another two are chatting animatedly about some celebrity article in a magazine, at the same time clicking obsessively through little lines on their selected frequency. One is giving back a felony warrant to an officer on a traffic stop. Still another is complaining about an officer running data on seventeen license plates in a row. The Supervisor, sitting elevated at the center console is, at once, monitoring a new call-receiver and calling out a road crew to come place barricades at a traffic accident. All of these things are happening simultaneously, yet to the untrained eye, you may think they are seemingly completely disconnected and unrelated to each other.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Working on a 911 dispatch floor can be compared to wandering through the inner recesses of a portion of someone's brain. Not all synapses are firing all the time, but when one does, the rest are aware. It's a low undercurrent. A buzz. A readiness. Each person in the room has a distinct and direct line to every other person in the room, if they

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