First Responses (formerly, “Police Blotter”)
Seven requests to EMT services were sent out from the call room, where seven dispatchers failed to overhear the addresses requested and repeated back at the same time.
On April 26, 2024, between 10:01AM and 10:04AM, the 911 emergency hotline of New Haven, Connecticut, received a series of calls for medical assistance at one apartment building in the East Rock neighborhood. Specifically, seven of the eight loft apartments on the third floor called reporting symptoms of stroke, and were in need of an ambulance. More specifically, they were all reporting one same symptom: detecting the scent of burnt toast.
Seven requests to EMT services were sent out from the call room, where seven dispatchers failed to overhear the addresses requested and repeated back at the same time. Seven different area EMS companies responded, and seven ambulances arrived on the corner of Lawrence and Nash Streets within a minute of one another. Seven EMTs with seven large aid kits in duffels bounded up the stairs ahead of the seven stretchers queued at the lobby elevator.
In the eighth apartment, one person quietly spread extra butter on their English muffin after picking off its charred crannies, before consuming absently in bites of various size, oblivious to the nooked pools of butter encountered by dips of the longer bristles in their scruffy mustache, while listening to a podcast about the cottage industry of tourist-attractive sea turtle nesting rescues on the private resort beaches of Mexico’s Pacific coast.
In the subsequent summer months, the seven penalized tenants for early lease termination file for bankruptcy due to seven bills received from seven unscrupulous ambulance companies that have benefited from an improperly incentivized health care system.
That fall, the eighth tenant gives a terse greeting passing one of their seven new neighbors while wheeling a carry-on luggage bag down to the elevator. Arriving at the first floor lobby, they exit into an awaiting Uber Black that will take them on a quiet and cool hourlong ride up to the airport, from which they will board a flight that connects them via Atlanta to their company-funded retreat in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.