第149期：坚守希望： 一名急救电话接线员的自白

想成为我们的主播，欢迎加微信 xdfbook 投稿。 一段美文，一首英文歌，或是一点生活感想，全由你做主。 《坚守希望： 一名急救电话接线员的自白》 Holding Hope: On Being a 911 Operator I’ve listened to a lot of people die, and take it from me1), people don’t slip away quietly like they do on screen, with one last longing look and a soft sigh of disappointed resignation2). There are, of course, some quiet deaths—dying in one’s sleep is something many of us hope for. But the body is built to fight, and even in the most exhausted of frames, it can kick up a racket3) on its way out. It’s not polite. It doesn’t ask permission. It rattles and gasps and wheezes like an accordion being run over by a tractor-trailer4). It fights with the bouncer5) and hurls6) epithets7) over its shoulder as it’s carried out. I’ve worked 911 for seventeen years as the first of the first responders. I’m the person who tells you how to do CPR8) when you see a guy drop in front of Starbucks, when no one else wants to help, when you can’t remember one single thing you learned in that class you took before you had your first kid. I’ve heard so many people die that sometimes I can tell the person is dying before the caller does. That fish-gasp-snore sound (called agonal breathing) is the reason CPR is sometimes started too late to help. “Ma’am,” I say, “He’s not getting enough oxygen. I’m going to tell you how to do CPR.” “Oh, I can’t do that. He’s still breathing. Can’t you hear that snoring? Just get here!” But I can tell by the sound that he’s not snoring, he’s actually dying, and without immediate intervention he won’t make it. It’s up to me and only me to convince the eighty-year-old woman that she’s strong enough to pull her husband off the bed in order to get him on a flat surface (You can’t do compressions on a bed. Pull the sheet he’s lying on. Don’t worry about the fall is what I say. You can’t hurt a dead man is what I don’t say). It’s up to me to convince the seventeen-year-old girl to give mouth-to-mouth to a friend who’s overdosed, even when the caller is high as hell and doesn’t want to get anywhere near the stuff coming out of her friend’s mouth. It’s up to me to tell the mother how to cut down her son who’s hung himself with a rope made from his stepfather’s ties in case there’s still oxygen lingering in his blood. Speed. Now. The faster, the better. The more convincing I can be, the better chance the person has of being revived. You answer the phone. You talk two hikers through giving CPR to a stranger on a hillside. Tell one how to pull the latitude and longitude off their iPhone because the call came in on the wrong line while coaching the other hiker not to stop compressions. Get the helicopter ordered, help it land safely in the right place. Finish your slice of pizza long gone cold. Fiddle9) with the crossword puzzle from the day before. Answer the next phone call. Don’t ask about the endings. HIPAA10) laws make it clear that unless you have a need to know, you have no right to know anyone else’s medical information. It can be frustrating to never know the endings. Unless you make the endings up yourself. I started writing them down, fictional plots based on nothing but the conglomerate11) of grief I stored in the back of my mind—the endings I wrote to all my novels were hopeful, because hope was what I heard every day on the phones. The hope that I—that someone—could help before it was too late. The novel, The Ones Who Matter Most, was the result of listening to hundreds of women over the years entering miscarriage12). “No, no, no, no. Not this, no.” The liturgy13) these women chant is millennia old. Don’t sit on the toilet, I tell them. Don’t cross your legs. They cling to my words, hoping that if they do what I say, they can change the ending. Hope. I hold out14) hope. Because without hope, we don’t go on. Hope is the only thing that lets us say goodbye to our loved ones in the mornings—the hope we’ll come back together later, safely. Hope is the thing our brains hold without us having to try. Our bodies, even at the edge of death, still hope for oxygen, still try to grab at it. Hope is extravagant15) and senseless and often just plain ridiculous, and yet still it rises. Once I took a call for a 103-year-old woman who stopped breathing while at a family birthday party. Her great-grandson did perfect CPR—I could hear the sound her chest made as he did compressions in exactly the right rhythm. All the while, he panted and muttered, “Come on, Grandma, you can make it. Come on, Grandma. You can do this.” Behind him, the whole family cheered them both on. I was listening to a house full of hope. A home full of love. I’ve just left the day job. It’s not like it’s a spur-of-the-moment thing. I’ve been working both 911 and writing, ninety hours a week, for ten years. I’ve published three literary novels, ten feminist romances, and one memoir, and this is what I’ve been working toward. I’m as ready for this leap as I’ll ever be. It’s been almost two months of complete self-employment and I’m still twitching from adrenaline16) withdrawal, but not having to wear a pager17) to go to the bathroom is great. Actually sleeping at night—every night—is even better. So even though my hopeful dispatch18) manager has put me on the part-time roster19) just in case I feel like picking up some shifts, I think I’ve made the right choice in taking off my headset for good20). I spent seventeen years listening to what can go wrong, hearing stories of predictable losses and freak accidents. I had the two best jobs in the world: giving immediate, life-saving assistance, and then making up stories about what happened next. I knew that sometimes, while on 911, I helped someone save a life. And then a couple of readers wrote to me, saying I’d saved their lives. That’s exactly as untrue as it would be if I took credit for actually restarting someone’s heart over the phone. In not one single case did I put my hands on a chest and push. There was always someone else following my directions—they did the life-saving. In the same way, I don’t believe my writing can actually save someone. But in both those jobs, I played the same role: to be the holder of hope. On the phone, I was the placeholder, the voice the caller clutched21) while waiting for an actual hand. In my books, I’m also just a voice, something to cling to while a reader’s world slips sideways. And I’m hoping like hell I get it right. From now on I’m wearing no headset and leaving behind only black marks on a white page, holding the space for hope and the shaky breath that follows it. 我是希望的坚守者。在电话的一头，我代替着希望而存在，拨打电话的人依靠这个声音的力量，等候着真正援手的到来。 我在急救电话里听过很多人死去，所以相信我，人们并不会像屏幕上演的那样安静地离开，带着最后一个渴望的神情，再轻叹一口气，满是失望的无奈。当然，有些死亡确实发生得悄无声息——在睡梦中死去是我们许多人都希望获得的一种解脱。但人的身体天生就是不到最后一刻决不放弃，即便是最疲惫不堪的身躯，也能在离世之际弄出好大动静。它毫不客气。它也不会经谁允许。它喉咙里咯咯作响，张大嘴呼吸急促，胸部发出喘鸣声，像是个重载拖车碾过的手风琴。它敢于与彪悍的保安干仗，而当它被带走时，还会一路扭头叫骂。 我已经在急救电话中心工作17年了，是最早的一批接线员之一。当你看到有人倒在星巴克门口，却没人愿意伸出援手，而你虽然在第一个孩子出生前上过一些有关急救的课，但课上教的内容已完全记不起来的时候，我就是那个会告诉你怎么给旁人做心肺复苏术的人。 我听过人死去的次数太多了，有时候打电话过来的人还没意识到那个人正在死去，而我已经意识到了。那种像鱼离开水大口喘气又像是打鼾的声音(这就是所谓的濒死呼吸)正是心肺复苏术用得太迟而回天无力的原因。 “女士，”我会说，“他现在供氧不足。我现在要教你如何做心肺复苏术。” “噢，我不会做那个。他还有呼吸啊，你听不见他发出的呼噜声吗？赶紧派人来！” 但是我凭声音就听得出他不是在打呼噜，而是在死去，如果不立刻采取措施，他一定活不下来。这个时候，就要靠我，而且只能靠我，来说服那个80岁的老太太，让她相信自己有足够的力气把她丈夫从床上拖下来，好让他躺在平地上(在床上不能做胸部按压。用力拽他身子下的床单。我会告诉对方，别担心从床上摔下来那一下。我不会告诉对方的是，摔一下也比死了强。)我还要去说服那个17岁的小姑娘，去给她毒品吸食过量的朋友做人工呼吸，虽然这个姑娘自己也处于吸食毒品后极度兴奋的状态，而且完全不想靠近她朋友嘴里流出的污秽物。我还要去告诉那个妈妈，如何把她儿子从用他继父的领带做成的绳结中给解救下来，因为他的血液中说不定还有些氧气。赶紧。现在就做，越快越好。我的说服力越强，那个人被救活的可能性就越大。 你接起电话。你向两个徒步旅行的人讲解如何在山坡上给陌生人做心肺复苏术。你告诉其中一人怎样从他们的iPhone里获取经纬度，因为他打我这个急救电话是查不到地理方位的，同时还要教另外一个人不要停止胸部按压。然后联系直升机，帮助它在正确的地点安全降落。 然后你吃完那块早就放冷了的比萨。做了做前一天的填字游戏。接起下一个电话。不要问事情有了什么样的结局。《健康保险携带和责任法案》有明确规定，除非你有知悉结果的需要，否则你无权过问其他任何人的医疗信息。从来不知道后来发生了什么是一件令人沮丧的事情。除非你自己编写出一个结局来。 我开始把它们都写下来，那些虚构的情节全都来自于我脑海深处聚集的悲伤——我为我的小说所写的结局都充满了希望，因为我每天在电话里听到的都是希望。每个打电话的人都希望我——或是其他人——能够在事情变得无可挽回之前施以援手。 《最要紧的那些人》这部小说就源自于我多年来所听到的数以百计的正经历流产的女性们。“不，不，不，不。不要发生这种事，不要。”这些女性们反复呻吟的祈祷词千百年来都一样。不要坐在马桶上，我告诉她们。双腿不要交叠。她们对我的话言听计从，希望着如果按照我的话做了，她们能够让结局变得不一样。 希望。我在电话里送出的是希望。 ………… 文章摘自：《新东方英语》杂志2016年9月号