“Trevor Foundation’s suicide prevention hotline, how may I help you?”

Adjusting her headset, the flexible gooseneck to which the microphone has been attached, Sandy uses her free hand to pull out a click stick pen and a notepad from the file drawer. While the sighing individual at the other end musters courage, she comes across a bunch of blue ink daisies and clumsy sea turtles she drew during a ninety minute marathon call. That time it had been Jessica, a high-school student from Barstow. She’d been dumped by her girlfriend who after their brief but very passionate relationship had re-evaluated the tender balance between her endangered trust fund and sexual identity. She’d then fallen head over heels in love with the broad-shouldered captain of the local football team. What had added to Jessica’s misery had been the fact that her former lover had started spreading vicious rumors about her being a devoted practitioner of unlawful carnal knowledge. Whether it had been Sandy’s unbreakable concentration in sketching the daisies and sea turtles, or an uninterrupted opportunity to ventilate congested emotions, Jessica’s plan to throw herself in front of an Amtrak train had eventually macerated to a twenty minute sob. That’s how you save lives, Sandy had congratulated herself for a job well done.

“Trevor Foundation’s suicide prevention hotline, how may I help you?” she repeats, pretty sure the caller hasn’t gulped a handful of sleeping pills, rinsing them down with bourbon. This she can tell from the prolonged silence – usually the sauced felo-de-se candidates start blabbering the moment they get through. In the background there isn’t the sound of a bath running either. Sandy is pretty comfortable assuming the desperate soul hasn’t sliced his wrists with a razorblade. Furthermore, the lack of rapid wind and traffic noises indicates he’s not standing on the roof of a twenty story apartment building or at a poorly lit overpass, making the last attempt for human contact before plunging to his death. Of course, what remains is the option of a loaded shotgun jammed under the trembling chin. You can’t smell gun lubricates via telephone.

“Yeah,” a middle-aged male voice launches timidly. “Is there someone I can talk to?”

“Yes, sir. My name is Sandy and I’m a trained counselor.”

“Hi,” the man echoes coyly. Sandy picks up a fresh caller information sheet and checks the box that specifies the caller’s sex.

“Well, I’ve had these thoughts about hurting myself. I’ve had them since…”

“Excuse me, sir, but I need to ask you few questions before we can proceed. It’s just general information that’ll be used to improve the quality and response times of the Trevor Foundation’s lifeline services. It won’t take long.”

“Oh, sorry,” the caller apologizes, his nervous mouth so close to the receiver Sandy can hear his teeth grind.

“That’s all right. Now, could you tell me to which of the following four age categories you belong to? Twenty to twenty-five, twenty-five to thirty-five, thirty-five to forty-five or older than forty-five?

“Thirty-five to forty-five.”

“And prior to this have you ever called any of the Trevor Foundation’s hotlines?”

“Eh, no.”

Dressed in a trendy Banana Republic sheer cotton band-collar shirt and cropped chino pants, her fairly large breast implants and long fake nails hindering her from making legible notes, Sandy doesn’t resemble anything like your average humanitarian. Yet her voice is soft as hot butter, a lenitive lure that has, over the past three years, worked for National Hopeline, Teen Suicide Prevention, Runaway Switchboard, Federation of Telephone Emergency and Crisis Intervention of California.

It’s not general philanthropy that keeps Sandy moving from one form of tragedy to another. It’s being married to a successful heart surgeon who, due to habitual dipsomania, has lost all interest in marital responsibilities. At first she thought it was all about her. But after getting her ass tightened by a StairMaster FreeClimber, and her modest breasts enlarged by a distinguished plastic surgeon, she admitted it was something more than her physical appearance that had disturbed the tender balance of connubial things. It was as if John wasn’t there anymore, only the inelegant and harsh shell of him that between work and sleep drifted in and out of his intoxicated delirium, the passive state of his preference.

Despite his plebian drinking habits John provides sufficient income for Sandy to stay at home where she fights boredom by coming up with new and innovative ways to squander her ample allowance. Of course, mindless consuming can only carry a person so far. Therefore she has turned, after a brief training period and the mandatory criminal background and child abuse history checks, her concentration to volunteering. Distributing benevolence from the privacy of her own quarters, she roots for the people handicapped by chronic depression and domestic violence, continual loneliness and persistent drug habits, because on a certain level, their misery serves as her personal deliverance. When they threaten to fill their nervous stomachs with drain cleaners, she feels emancipated. When their faltering voices tell her they’re sitting in their car with a modified garden hose running from the tip of a blackened exhaust pipe to the inside of the cabin, she weeps with joy.

“…and before contacting the Trevor Foundation, did you attempt to call any of the other prevention hotlines?” she recites the sentences on the questionnaire.

“Eh, no, I don’t think so.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” she says, slipping the pen off the form and into the notepad where it makes a hasted first attempt to draw a black tailed jackrabbit, “but I’m going to need an answer on that one. Did you or did you not attempt to call some other hotline?”

“Well, I’m not entirely sure,” the voice hesitates. “The problem, you see, is that I’ve been drinking heavily for the past two weeks now and my memory…”

“Drinking?” Sandy interrupts coarsely. “Sir, are you telling me that your problem is alcohol related?”

“Well, yeah.”

“And you’re not suffering from tumors or cancer of any kind?”

“Not that I’m aware of.”

“Then, sir, I must regret that we can’t proceed any further. This toll-free number is reserved for people suffering from any of the various malignant neoplasms characterized by the proliferation of anaplastic cells.”

Halfway finished with the clumsy cottontail, she focuses on inscribing the creature’s eyes and mouth.

“What the hell is this?” the man gripes desperately. “You said that this was a suicide prevention hotline.”

“Yes, but only for cancer patients harboring self-destructive thoughts. In case you’re not aware, the Trevor Foundation has different phone numbers for troubled teens, the sexually abused, the gambling addicted, those who have sexual orientation to persons of the same sex and drug and/or alcohol-dependents. All I can say is that you must’ve misdialed.”

“Lady, you better listen to me. I have a gun here. It’s a fuckin’ forty-five that’ll blow my fuckin’ top off in case I don’t get some fuckin’ counseling right fuckin’ now.”

Underneath the caller’s heavy breathing, Sandy can hear the manual cocking of the hammer, a stretched, metallic click.

“Sir, there is no need for so many profanities. I can understand that you’re going through a rough period in your life, but I suggest that you check the number to which you just phoned and try again. And since the Trevor Foundation is a donation funded organization, we would surely appreciate a small endowment at your first possible convenience. Help us to help others. That’s our motto.”

“Help you to... Why you conniving little…”

Sandy hits the line-killing red button on her mini-phone console, missing the weighty thud of the hammer as it strikes the firing pin.

After removing the headset she fixes her hair and turns her attention to a damaged fingernail that gets a royal emergency treatment with a Sephora glass file. Then she checks the phone line, but there are no incoming calls. Nobody is clawing her imaginary door for support. This cancer thing was a big mistake, she gripes. I should’ve stuck with the teens. With the teens there were always plenty of good calls.

Although she likes to believe differently, there is more to her inclement angst than the descending number of electric cries for help. It’s best to be described as a hulking numbness that suggests she has developed an emotional tolerance toward human suffering. She wouldn’t probably care too much about that if it didn’t keep her slipping further away from her own salvation.
Downtrodden by what she considers a humanitarian calamity, she makes it downstairs where John, tucked inside Fruit of the Loom sweatpants and an extra-large Vurt polo shirt, is watching a Columbo marathon. He’s boozing away with a quarter of Le Rhum Negrita. Sufficiently tanked on faux Cuba Libres – Pepsi and French rum distilled from molasses – he has conquered the sofa. The blue and yellow Ottoman throw pillows pinned underneath him are screaming for a fashionable interior designer to come and rescue them.

“How’s the volunteering going?” John barfs, not taking his swollen eyes off the screen. “You better be careful or you could be indicted for euthanasia.”

“Drop dead, Johnny,” Sandy responds indifferently, knowing perfectly well the reason for her husband’s sour mood. They haven’t talked about it – they’re married so why should they – but Johnny’s pending medical malpractice charge has earned him enough space in the local newspapers to make her aware of his dicey occupational situation. (Closing up a wound while a pair of ergonomic micro-ring forceps still rest inside the patient’s ribcage can’t be defined as a great career move. It’s even less so when the operating doctor has self-medicated with Rohypnol – a central nervous system depressant ten times more potent than Valium – to rid himself of a throbbing hangover.)

“Unlike you, there are people out there, real people, who need my help.”

John chuckles to her domestic perjury, slurping the high octane drink from a polished cocktail glass.

“Those people are freaks, plain and simple. How the hell do they think that whining their problems to a total stranger can make their lives any better?”

Sandy’s eyes jade into the distance, stretching the ghostly stare beyond the upholstered seats and past the illegally-imported antique sideboard. She senses how her insides turn, locking her emotional labiality into an attack mode. More than conscious of the reality that she can’t win John over, she makes a maladjusted decision to bring on the pressure. As sweet as the fruitless countermeasure must taste, it ranks right next to hand-feeding tiger sharks on the scale of sanity.

“Coming from a man with a matching liver and body fat percentage you better not announce those opinions publicly. People might miss your point.”

Tormenting John about his fatty liver and the lurking possibility of developing alcohol cirrhosis is one thing. For a man openly boasting about his proof tolerance, that’s more like an outstanding achievement award than a vexed insult; a notch-cornered walnut plaque granted for excellence in the field of staggering gait and slurred speech. Surprisingly enough, the man is far more sensitive about somebody referring mockingly to his rich figures.

With the preeminent TV-detective about to crack the case, John gets up, towering above his defiant spouse, and delivers a powerful overhand slap.

After the customization of a bleached cotton ball to plug her bleeding nose, and a hasty process of stain removal from a name brand cotton shirt, Sandy grabs her cell phone and steps out to the patio. Exhausted by the spiced beverage, John is already snoring on the couch like a tranquilized walrus. His asymmetric mouth is half open. The sagging belly hangs over the tortured waistband that is guaranteed to leave a pressure mark.

Sandy seats herself on one of the fair-sized loungers, nurturing the swelling under her left eye with an ice pack. She views the dusty wasteland crested with mute bulldozers that have just about flattened the entire park. The manmade pond and waterway have been filled. Further down there are still a few pockets of resistance, occasional patches of dark green where the outnumbered young oaks stand like leafed ghosts to make their final stand. The setting sun paints the remaining foliage and floating particles of soil with subtle hints of hot orange and burgundy. The growing shadows dance around the explosion-formed crater.

This isn’t the life I signed up for, she protests, wondering if the blown-up construction worker had felt anything. After a moment’s consideration, Sandy flips her phone open. Speed-dialing while the rising inner pressure makes her abdominal muscles convulse, she can hardly wait for an answer. “Domestic Violence Hotline, how may I help you?” is what the warm voice at the other end says.
***
Night falls over the dreary neighborhood and you curl up on your side of the Essex Cove Queen alder bed, your frame securely tugged against Amanda’s Laura Ashley draped skeleton. You keep roving deeper into the mysterious realms of the dream world which, for your inconvenience, has loaded both of its ventilated rib barrels with buckshot nightmares. There is no escaping the blunt truth of this turning into one of the worst nights you’ve ever had. And that’s including the rather embarrassing bedwetting incident which took place during summer camp in the Catskills when you were eight years old.

There is an art in creating phantoms for oneself.