Part 3 — The Late Shift
The crisis center sat above a dentists office on the east side of town. One plain room, eight phones, and a coffee maker older than I am.
The coordinator, Marlene Okoye, hugged me before she said a word. Then she held me at arm length and smiled. “You have his hands,” she said.
On the corkboard there was a yellow sticky note in marker. Gene chair, 8 to midnight. Do not take. Beneath the desk sat a cushion worn flat, and in the drawer a chipped green thermos I had seen on every fishing trip of my childhood.
A young volunteer named Jordan stood up from the back. He was twenty-six, in a faded sweatshirt. “Eight years ago I called at 11:40 at night with a plan,” he said. “Your father stayed on until six in the morning.”
“He told me about wiring a church steeple in 1974. He said the lights come on one at a time, and you never know which will be the last one until it is. We never traded names.”
Then four more people told me their nights. A mother. A retired teacher. A trucker who had pulled over on a dark highway. A girl who was now a nurse.
Marlene opened the old binder and showed me his log. Nine years of notes in blocky capitals. STAYED ON. WARM VOICE BY 2 AM. SHE SAID SHE WILL SEE THE DOCTOR. LIGHT COMING.
2,311 calls. Not one note ever mentioned himself.
My father never once told me he loved me. But sitting in that room I realized he had said it 2,311 times in the dark, to strangers who needed to hear it.
They asked if I wanted to say a few words. I could not. Instead I asked Marlene what it would take to learn.
The training was forty hours, with supervised calls and a long list of rules about listening and never fixing. I passed on the first try, which my father would have called luck.
Six weeks later I sat down in his chair at five minutes to eight. I set the green thermos on the desk and filled it with his kind of coffee, too strong.
At 8:02 the first line lit up. I took a breath, the way he must have, and said, “I am here. Take your time.”
Some men cannot say what they feel at the kitchen table, so they say it in the dark to anyone who needs to hear it.
If you are struggling tonight, please know you are not alone. In the United States you can call or text 988 at any hour, and someone will stay on the line with you.