Chapter 12 — Calls are not allowed to be hung up

At 2:50 a.m., the duty room only had a few scattered calls. Most of the night shift colleagues had switched to a slow work rhythm, some took a few minutes to nap in the break room on a rotating schedule. Dan did not leave the table for even a second, his eyes still glued to the silent desk phone, his hand constantly twirling the pencil between his fingers.

After meeting with Long, she spent half an hour reviewing everything she could do within the allowed limits: sending a second emergency location request via the network even though she knew the possibility of a different result was very low, preparing a brief summary to send to the child protection team as soon as they started work, and texting Vinh briefly to ask about the situation. He simply replied: "Still keeping an eye, nothing new yet." Bao Ky, sitting next to him, occasionally glanced over but didn't say anything more. Perhaps he also felt the tense atmosphere surrounding his colleague.

The phone rang, she picked it up before the first ring ended, a reflex that had become instinct after many hours of waiting.

— Miss...

The voice was whispering, but this time there was something more urgent than before, as if the child was talking while moving, his breathing ragged with each step, different from the tight cautiousness of the previous four calls.

Dan tightened her grip on the stethoscope, one hand and quickly typed on the keyboard to turn on priority recording, even though she knew the positioning data would still be no better than before.

— Here I am, tell me.

— My mother fainted, auntie, she's not awake...

Dan's heart sank, but she forced herself to keep her voice steady, all emotions pushed down beneath the layer of professional calm that had been honed over thousands of calls.

— Where are you, child, are you near me?

— I was... I sneaked out of the living room to see mom...

— Be careful, don't let me see you.

— Uncle is sleeping on the sofa, I...

The sentence was suddenly interrupted by a loud noise, like the sound of a chair falling or something hitting the floor, and then immediately a loud, sleepy but ferocious male voice rang out clearly through the line:

— What are you doing? Whose phone is it? Give it here!

The man's scream was like a knife cutting through the quiet space of the duty room. Dan clearly heard the sound of heavy footsteps rushing towards him, the sound of the child screaming a short panicked scream, then an indistinguishable chaotic sound, maybe a struggle, maybe the sound of something falling to the floor.

Bao Ky, sitting at the next table, turned around in surprise when he heard Dan's scream. His eyes widened when he saw her face. He immediately stood up. He didn't need anyone to say anything to understand that something bad was happening. He quickly ran to call Anh Tuyet even though she was already rushing from his side of the table.

— My child! My child, it's me, don't be afraid!

Dan shouted into the receiver, forgetting the principle of keeping her voice steady that she had followed for the past eight years. Her other hand pressed the emergency call button for Anh Tuyet, her fingers trembling on the keyboard.

— Return your mother's phone!

The man's voice screamed again, closer, clearer, and then there was a harsh "click" sound, possibly the sound of the phone being snatched from the child's hand and falling or being hit on a hard surface.

Then there was silence.

It's not the sound of hanging up. It wasn't the familiar, steady beeping sound that Dan had heard over and over again during the previous four calls. Just a thick silence, the line was still open, but there was no longer any sound, not even the smallest, echoing from the other end.

— My child! Do you hear me?

There was no reply. Dan kept the headset in place, her body stiff, her eyes staring at the screen where the call timer was still running, the numbers jumping up every second while there was no sign of life coming from the other end of the line, only a silent void that was getting longer and longer as if it wanted to swallow her last patience.

Anh Tuyet ran over at Dan's first scream, standing behind her, one hand on her shoulder, the other hand holding an extra headset to listen together.

— Is the line still open? — Anh Tuyet asked softly, her voice had lost some of its usual calmness.

— Still open. — Dan whispered, his voice hoarse. — But there was no sound at all.

The two of them held their breath, listening to every moment that passed in that absolute silence, trying to distinguish whether it was the silence of an empty room, or the silence of something worse going on beyond their hearing. Bao Ky stood behind the two of them, not daring to speak, just quietly reached out and gently squeezed the armrest of Dan's chair, a small gesture but enough for her to feel that she was not alone in this moment.

Ten seconds passed. Twenty seconds. Thirty seconds. Every second that passed in that silence was as heavy as a stone on Dan's chest, pulling her closer to the memory of another, much longer silence, forty-two minutes without any news, ending with a brief sentence over the intercom that she would never forget.

Then, very quietly, almost imperceptible if one were not straining one's ears to the maximum, an extremely small sound rang out: the sound of breathing, heavy, intermittent, it was unclear who belonged to it.

— There was a sound of breathing. — Anh Tuyet whispered. — Someone is still near the phone.

Dan nodded, not daring to speak loudly, afraid that any sound from her side could make the situation on the other end of the line worse if the other man discovered the phone was still open.

— She's still here. — She whispered into the receiver, almost silently, just enough to hope that someone on the other end of the line, if still conscious, could sense her presence. — She's not going anywhere.

The breathing continued, unevenly, sometimes intermittently as if trying to suppress a sob. Dan didn't know if it was the child's breathing or the mother's. He didn't know where the phone was, who it was near, or what condition it was in.

She tried to imagine the scene behind that layer of vague sound: a phone might be lying on the floor, the screen still lit, the camera pointed at the ceiling, recording no image but a meaningless white space, while the microphone still silently transmitted every breath of someone trying to keep from making a sound. She didn't know if the image was real or just the imagination of an overstressed mind, but she didn't dare let her concentration slip for even a moment.

Anh Tuyet signaled Bao Ky to get another chair and sat down next to Dan. The three of them glued their eyes to the screen displaying the running sound waves. The graph was almost flat, only occasionally showing small ripples corresponding to the interrupted breathing.

Then, suddenly, the line went dead. This time there was a familiar, steady, cold ringing sound, signaling that the call had truly ended, leaving behind an emptiness even more terrifying than the scream just now.

Dan put the headphones down on the table, her hands trembled uncontrollably, a feeling of panic that she had never allowed herself to experience during her eight years of working was now rolling up from the bottom of her chest, creeping through every layer of professional defense she had built up. She looked at the screen, the length of the call: two minutes and thirteen seconds, shorter than the fourth call, but heavier than any moment she had experienced since that April night five years ago.

- Knit. — Anh Tuyet grabbed her shoulder, her voice was stern but not panicked, like an anchor in the midst of a fierce wave. — Look at you. You need to calm down, right now.

Dan looked up, meeting the eyes of the woman who taught her everything about this profession, and in that moment, she realized she was standing at a crossroads where no process, no superior could make decisions for her anymore.

She looked down at her hands, still shaking but less intense than before, then looked at the clock screen in the right corner, two eight minutes in the morning. Exactly five years ago, at this hour of an April night, she sat helplessly waiting for news for forty-two long minutes, doing nothing but calling and waiting. Tonight, a new thought began to form in her mind, a thought she did not dare to say out loud, because she knew it would have consequences far beyond the scope of a switchboard operator's job.