“#FridayFlash No. 2″

            Calling by Jon the Storyteller

           “9-1-1, what’s the nature of your emergency?” the dispatcher asks me.

            There’s no panic in my voice as I tell her, “A man’s been stabbed behind Wal-Mart, near the Amtrak station.”  I have to remain calm, because the first responders need to be able to do their jobs.

            “You say a man’s been stabbed,” she squeaks.  There’s a sense of inexperience in her voice, but it’s still a statement instead of a question.

            “Yes, ma’am,” I agree.  “In the neck, by a man wearing a white baseball cap.  They were arguing, and now they aren’t,” I tell her matter-of-fact.

            It’s true they were arguing, over something dumb, I suppose.  Drugs, a girl, or forty dollars, something unworthy of a stabbing.  But as quickly as you can say boo, a knife was drawn and a man was sent to his destiny.

            “I’m sending police and an ambulance,” she assures, as if I’m critiquing her performance.  I’m not.  That’s not my department.  She continues, “Is the other man still on the scene?”

            I look around instinctively, though in my experience in these situations, I know he will not be.  “He’s gone ma’am,” I share politely, adding, “he was being chased down Union Street by another witness.”  Maybe he is, maybe he isn’t.  That’s not my department either.

            Mine is more intricate, more involved.  You know how, when in the heat of passion, you’ve recalled later to your BFF, that you didn’t know why you did what you did or that you didn’t think you had it in you or that you don’t even remember holding a pistol, never mind shooting one?  That’s my department.

            And I have more work to do.  As the sirens approach, the green dispatcher asks me my name, and I fail to answer.  I click shut my clam-shell cell phone and head off to my next assignment: a pregnant mom in Hackensack, if my memory is correct. 

           It always is.