THE MOMENT
Diana adjusted her headset as the digital clock on her desk flickered to 11:00 PM. Then, she waited. The Graveyard shift always started out a little slow before she was inundated with calls. Luckily, the way things normally worked, call volume dipped as Sunrise approached. The first nervous call of the night came in; they were all nervous. The caller sounded frightened; but, the fact they had the mind to use the hotline usually meant Diana's callers were calm enough to listen.
"Chroma Corp. Supernatural. This is Diana, how can I help you?" she answered. She listened patiently to the caller on the other end; but, she'd been on the job long enough to guess what they needed as soon as she heard the word 'ghost'.
"Oh, no. You don't want to do that," she answered calmly when the caller suggested their own course of action. "Real ghosts aren't like the ones on TV; the salt isn't going to do anything but make a mess. I can have an employee drop by...," her fingers danced on the keyboard as her eyes scanned the relevant boxes. "...in a few hours. Yes, before dawn of course," she answered their question. "It’ll be okay, I promise," she added a touch of concern that was mostly habit at this point. She'd taken a lot of calls and helped as many as she could. But, the never-ending negativity of fear that came through on every call was starting to wear on her.
As the night progressed, calls began to pile up. Werewolves, demons, vampires and more all did most of their work during the night, so it made sense that's when help was needed the most. Diana handled them with a blend of professionalism and worn, obligated empathy.
At around 5 AM, she finally seen ended a call with no one else on hold. The silence only lasted a brief moment before the phone rang again, but it was a sign. Diana answered.
"Chroma Corp. Supernatural. This is Diana, how can I help you?" The voice on the other end soured her mood a little more. It didn't sound like her normal callers. Every now and then, someone called the wrong number and it was often a challenge to convince them of that. The caller was overconfident and obviously had no idea what he was doing.
“What do you mean you can’t help me?! This is the Supernatural hotline, isn’t it?”
“This is the Supernatural call line operated by Chroma Corp.,” she clarified the answer for him.
“I don’t care who runs it! I’ve got a got a zombie trapped in the garage and someone needs to do something about it!”
“And they might, if you call a different hotline; have you tried the police?” Diana asked.
“THEY GAVE ME YOUR NUMBER!” Diana flinched from the sudden scream. She did sympathize with him. It wasn’t his fault that the police didn’t care enough to know better. And, she did have access to the right tools to help him. But, that scream was the tipping point; the moment she decided she didn’t have to.
“I’m sorry about that. What I can do is make sure to correct them so that they no longer give out this number. Unfortunately, that’s not the kind of help we offer,” she replied.
“What?” the caller’s voice took on an amused, but fed up tone. “You’re A SUPERNATURAL HOTLINE! What kind of help DO YOU OFFER??” Diana smiled at that outburst. It meant she could be done.
“As I’ve said, this is Chroma Corp.’s hotline. We’re quite invested in the Supernatural sector and the purpose of our hotline is to provide assistance our Supernatural clients. This line is for them. Thank you for calling Chroma Corp. Supernatural.”