9:00 pm.

“The girls was kidnapped at the middle of the night right after she was getting out of her car”

“Inside reports from the school said the perpetrators abduct the girl into a black van to transported her towards her death”

“Police said the kid was save after calling 911 dispatchers to ask for advices of how to cure his own wound”

We hear this kind of news every day. Some of them are happy, some of them are sad, some of them are sadder. Even though we try to not connect with those stories and get our feelings and emotions involve is hard to not at least feeling a bit frustrated. Not only because is impossible to believe we live in a world this damage but more because we are part of that.

We are 911 dispatchers.

I, personally, have a hate – love relationship with my job since I started. I was so young and yet I needed a job to keep my own things at my own way.

I lived in a little apartment which I used to flourish for something more.

This was a well-paid job and still it is but I never knew about the consequences this brought to my life.

All the new people were trained since how to get the call for a wound to how attended a call for a suicide person, the protocol, the rules and the thousands of tips for people in any sort of danger. The theory was so easy. This was like learning how to draw. It was a piece of bread. I thought I would turn out the best 911 dispatcher ever, I thought I could do so much more than just help, I thought I could save lives with only attending a call.

I was wrong.

So wrong.

I can’t count how many times I cried in panic, trying to compose myself because a call was too shocking for me; for example I had to listen how a stranger murdered a mother and I could not do anything because the officers didn’t arrived on time.

I spend almost my first days inside the therapy room crying and letting out all the stress the calls gave me.

The panic is too horrific and there’s no way you can let this person alone. You need to face it together with them.

That news came on by the morning and I decided to change. This wasn’t about me and how confortable I want to be in any job. It’s about the people needing my help. I can’t be the best by magic; I need to prepare myself for it.

As I was on the night shift, I spend all day composing myself before going to work and started to leave the emotions by the door, right before entering the building.

Sometimes it was hard to pretend I wasn’t affected but I believe each day, no matter how cold and how much experience you have in this job, you can’t ignore how bad things can turn out.

Each day was the same until I got immune to the emotion, the feelings and the attachment. If people didn’t make it, it wasn’t my fault, I did everything I could, actually, I used, until this day, to do everything I can to save the life of a person.

I don’t regret doing this job. I think five years of being a 911 dispatcher, shows it.

I put all my belongings in my locker; it’s almost 10:00 pm (the largest shift), which is the start of my shift. Every time, before going on the room I stretch myself for a while, I’ll spend 10 hours sitting in the desk answering calls for all over Seoul city and as it’s Friday, I think is going to be very move.

After stretching I put my sweater on as the room is a very cold place, they need it so the computers and the electronics can be cool enough to be on almost all the time.

I walk the long hallway that separates me from the room. I pass the kitchen, where we can make and have some coffee during breaks and some of us use it to cool down a bit. Besides the kitchen is the therapy room, I know that room very well during my first months in this building. We have coloring books and sometimes if we don’t want to talk, Mrs. Park give us a paper and a pencil and we can write down all the we want to write down to loosen up a bit.

A few steps more and you get into the room; where are almost 50 desks, each one with a worker attending calls… attending your calls.

“Dude!” I feel a slightly punch in my shoulder and then an arm hugging my neck. I’m sure is Taehyung. “How about that?” It was his voice. “I arrived early today!”

“Yes” I said as I smiled at him. “You won’t be fired”

He smiled wryly and stepped away from me while taking a sip of his own coffee. He is very used to arrive late and the boss always threaten him with kick him out if he keeps being unpunctual.

“Hey” I said. “Don’t drink it all in one shot, you needed for the next ten hours”

Taehyung arrived to this building a year after me. I guess everyone has the dark period during their first day. I think we know how horrible can be for the new dispatchers. Believe me, there are no people who don’t know the panic and the stress in this room. We all walked the same path. He was slow though, for him was a bit difficult to suppress at almost cero his feelings. And sometimes, he felt guilty when something went wrong. For him, it was not about the call or how hard the situation of the call was, it was more his performance on the call. It wasn’t the murders' responsibility, for Taehyung, it was HIS responsibility.

It took days to finally make him realize he wasn’t the one to blame and he was there to bring a help to people not to save directly them, he needed to understand that sometimes, that is not possible.

Four years after, he’s all a grown up in this job. Stills a dumb monkey, but I’m proud of him.

“That is why I am drinking the coffee” He answers me after drinking the last drop. “Ten hours here is pure nightmare” He points at me after. “And you know that”

As the bell ring, making us know is already 10:00 pm and our shift is starting, I nod at him with a weak smile. Here we go again. We got close to our desk. Some of the previous dispatchers are still there as they haven’t finish the call they received, and some of them are grabbing their personal things to finally go to sleep in a peaceful night.

“What’s up Tzuyu?” I said