Emergency Services

Emergency Services

They made six calls that night. Six false emergencies, spaced just far enough apart to feel clever. Laughter pressed into sleeves, invented panic, then the click of disconnection. The operator stayed calm every time. Calm made it feel harmless. He went home believing the night had been wasted on nothing.

His mother had taken ill while he was out. Severe pain. Trouble breathing. His father had called for an ambulance the moment it started. He waited by the door, pacing, phone in his hand, repeating the address as if it might hurry someone along. The ambulance was delayed. By the time it arrived, she was already dead.

The house filled with voices and uniforms and words spoken carefully. Time of death. Nothing more could be done. Sudden onset. Unavoidable. The kind of phrases that soften the blow for people who need them softened. His father did not accept them.

In the weeks that followed, he said it again and again, to anyone who would listen. The ambulance never came in time. They were sent somewhere else first. A false call. Youths messing about. Wasting time for fun.She died because of them, his father said, over and over. “Because of stupid kids who thought it was a joke.” The son never spoke.

He sat at the table, stared at his hands, nodded when expected. Each word was true. Just not in the way his father believed. He lives with it now. He carries it through the quiet of daily life, in the sound of sirens passing streets he no longer walks. He knows that while he was pretending an emergency existed, a real one was waiting. His father never knew. And there is no way to confess something that would only hurt the living again.