I'm a 911 dispatcher working on Christmas night.

I live in a town of about 35,000 people, it’s small enough to have some pretty slow days but big enough for occasional homicides, armed robberies and more intense incidents. My shift is from 10pm until 6am, it’s the shift I like the most since it’s slower and gives me all day to do whatever I want. There is usually two of us scheduled to work at all times but my partner is off due to an injury. That means I’m working Christmas alone.

I knew it would be a lonely shift tonight, locked in the dispatch center alone. It’s about 11 degrees out and we have about five inches of fresh snow. There wouldn’t be many people out but with all the snow I could expect some traffic accidents, then probably family members fighting with each other and random medical emergencies. I should be able to handle everything just fine.

I only live a couple blocks from the police station so I just usually walk, it’s easier than brushing off the snow and warming up my car. It feels cold and empty out. I never really know what I’m walking into when I get to work but it doesn’t do any good to worry about it.

When I walk in the door afternoon shift is happy to see me. “Glad you’re here, we’ve had two suicides today!” “Tis the season” I told them. Then they let me know one of the suicides was a retired officer’s son. The officer worked her twenty plus years and just retired about two months ago, he was a bit intimidating but I always liked him. What’s even worse, is that this is his second son to commit suicide. His first son was in the same grade as me and shot himself after we graduated high school.

He was working at the time of his first son’s suicide and was the first one on scene too. They say it really messed up the officer mentally for some time. The officer has saw some of the worst things in the department, he was first on scene with some terrible murders. My partner said that the officer called and had found his son’s body, it was the calmest suicide call she had ever taken.

The retired officer has been through some terrible things, and has some scary health problems too. Now I can’t help but think that we might have one more suicide call coming soon.

It’s now 1:00am, I’ve been at work three hours. The first couple hours are the worst because you don’t know what kind of night it’s going to be. Afternoon shift must have cleaned everything up for me since I’ve been sitting here in pretty much silence. No 911 calls, no admin line calls, just a traffic stop and an arrest of somebody being drunk and stupid at the bar. The guy had a warrant for not seeing the judge on a $40 ticket, if the guy wasn’t causing trouble at the bar we probably would have let him go.

Working with nothing going on gets me more nervous sometimes when its busy. When it’s busy I can get into a flow and just work, quiet times are when I get into my own head a bit and get jumpy when a 911 call rings in.

About 4:00 we get a call about somebody sitting in an empty parking lot alone and cold. We check on him, yup he’s cold and just wants out of town. He’s planning on hitchhiking out in the morning and didn’t want any help from us. Good luck out there, guy.

4:40am, bus station calls and wants a transient removed, he’s been loitering and doesn’t have a ticket. This happens all the time. We send him on his way.

5:00am a guy calls about his work truck being stolen, it was out front about thirty minutes ago, now it’s gone. He had a speech impediment so I had a tough time understanding him. We only have an hour to go but the officer up at bat has her weekend start tomorrow and this will definitely need a report. Too bad, off ya go. Officer arrives on scene and the truck is completely missing, but there’s footprints in the 4 inches of snow I told you about earlier.

The tracks lead to a Honda CRV stuck in the snow bank, strange. I run the plate and the address returns about a block away, so officer goes and knocks on the door. The owner of the vehicle says somebody must have stolen it, luckily they didn’t make if far and had to steal somebody else’s vehicle. So now the officer has to hold over and get two separate reports done before she goes home for her weekend.

Overall not a bad Christmas shift for me. I’m home now and finishing this post up before I go to bed. Pretty lonely but it could have been worse. If ya have any questions about my job go ahead and ask in the comments, I’m thinking I should do more posts like this.

Good night and Merry Christmas Steemit.