I’d seen them before, flying completely normally until, all of a sudden, they stop, as if shot from the sky. They tumble over themselves, spinning their way through the air towards the ground until you think that their time here is up, their ticket punched, their bucket kicked. But then, they right themselves, returning to the flock and carrying on as if nothing has happened. My uncle had told me once that it’s a survival tactic that domestic pigeons have developed over centuries but it seems strange to me, that a method of survival should look so much like the opposite.
I heaved a sigh, dug my heels into the pale blue carpet tile below my desk, threadbare from years of wear, and pulled myself closer to the desk. I replaced my headset, the plastic band returning to the notch it always created in the skin behind my ear.
I looked at my screen and saw that there were three calls waiting to be answered. I clicked a call, accepted it and sat back in my chair, taking a breath before speaking. ‘Hello, you’re through to Healthy Minds. Can I ask who’s calling please?’
‘Hey, is that Nell?’ The familiar voice came on the line.
‘Hey, Jackson,’ I replied. ‘How’s it going today?’
Jackson had been a regular caller, almost once a week, for the past five years. In fact, his first call to the helpline had been during my first shift and so I felt a sort of affinity with him. He was bipolar and had severe social anxiety that he tried to fight at every opportunity. Some of those fights were more successful than others. During my time helping him on calls, we’d managed to find him an appropriate doctor, the right meds and he was doing better now than he ever had before. Things had been going well until his mother had died last year, making matters worse.
‘I’m okay,’ he said as if trying to reassure himself. ‘Better than last week, but worse than I’ll be after I hear your voice for a few more minutes.’
I smiled and relaxed a little. Jackson always set me at ease because it was like talking to an old friend. I often found it strange that if I passed him in the street I would have no idea who he was. But I knew more about the inner workings of his mind than anyone else on the planet, other than his doctor. Whenever he got through to another operator, he would ask to be patched through to me, no matter how long he had to wait.
I hadn’t thought about this as a career choice when I was younger. I’d wanted to be a counsellor or support worker because I liked to help people, enjoyed seeing a smile at the end of the tears. But uni had been daunting for me and I’d found myself sinking in a sea of people who seemed to be far surer about everything than I was. I hadn’t known what I’d missed, if there was a book I’d failed to read or a class I’d somehow not attended, but everyone else seemed to know far more than I did and, in the end, I’d decided to leave that confusing world behind.
I kept in touch with my friends who were still at uni, doing the drinking and partying part of student life in lieu of the actual student part. That’s how I met Joel. I worked in cafés for a while, a carpet shop for a little bit, but after working for years in jobs that made nothing but money and did nothing of greater value for the world, I decided to volunteer at the Healthy Minds helpline. I had only planned on staying for a couple of months, but six months later I was still there and the office manager had offered me one of the very few paid positions. I’d snapped up the offer in a millisecond.
I loved helping people. I loved putting the phone down and knowing that the person who’d called was freer and happier than they had been when I’d picked up. But the job wasn’t always so rosy. I could usually tell within thirty seconds if a call was going to be a suicidal one or not and whenever those dreaded calls came in, my stomach would bunch up in knots and my heart would hammer in my chest. Not that they happened as often as people might think. But when they did all moisture would leave my mouth and I would find myself calm and reassuring on the outside, but inside a maelstrom of anxiety was raging. Because all it takes to tip someone over from thinking about it to actually doing it, is one badly constructed sentence, one thoughtlessly uttered phrase – and that’s a lot of pressure.
You could always tell when Ned’d had a suicidal call. We referred to them as hard calls, because that’s exactly what they were. Hard for them, hard for us.
He’d had a particularly bad one a couple of years ago and it just so happened that that call happened on his birthday. He’d been happy for the majority of the day, which was odd for him because he usually detested his birthday. Barry, the office manager, had presented him with a cake and we’d all sung to him. Then he’d got back to work and answered the call that would put a stop to his birthday joviality. He never knew what happened to the person on the other end of the line and, in some ways, that’s even worse than knowing the truth, because ambiguity allows for hope and there is no crueller thing in this world than hope.
Jackson had been a hard call on a few occasions, but not today. Today all he wanted to do was chat and talk about his day at work and how he’d been feeling. The doctor was trying him on a new course of anti-anxiety medication
