It Started With a Phone Call

I didn’t understand what was happening until years later, but the realization will remain with me always. It was 1982 and all my husband and I thought about was how we were going to raise our two young children and pay our newly acquired home mortgage with its 17-percent interest rate.

Since my husband worked as much as he could, we both knew I would need to find a job. It wasn’t going to be easy, especially since we couldn’t afford day care and I had no car. As luck would have it I scored a part-time job at an answering service that was near our home. The pay wasn’t great, but it was shift work, which meant I could schedule my hours around my husband’s and pick up extra work on weekends and holidays.

Back then, answering services were primitive by today’s standards. Nothing was computerized and the operators relied on plug boards with up to 50 lines each. Operators wore headsets that attached to the board consoles. We’d answer calls by pushing plugs into jacks and flipping a switch to the “on” position. Messages were written on slips of paper and placed in wooden mailboxes above the boards.

Our accounts ran the gamut from oil services to electricians to trucking companies, plus all types of medical doctors. We even had a woman who sold cosmetics and sexy lingerie. She flew all over the world, and I thought she must be amazingly successful as a retailer, until another operator told me her real occupation was that of a high-priced hooker.

The way the boards were set up allowed the accounts to listen in on us as we took calls, and some accounts took to listening in frequently to be sure were we answering their phones correctly and that we were following their procedures. What they didn’t realize was that we could listen in on their conversations as well.

I worked the hectic late-afternoon shift, which was so busy that operators were often on their feet taking calls from more than one board as frantic secretaries anxious to get home relayed the evening’s coverage.

A few months passed and I settled in; I was proud of myself for finding a reliable job. Operators were always reminded to check the bulletin board for updates, and I wasn’t surprised when I saw a notice announcing that two infectious-disease physicians had joined the accounts. The doctors were fresh off their fellowship training and had few patients. Both were soft-spoken and polite. All the operators were rooting for them. But night after night, as other lines buzzed away, their phone sat mostly idle. Their account became known as the dead zone with the phone that never rang — until one day it did.

I plugged into the call and the voice at the other end was that of an internist not on our service asking for a consultation. His patient, a young man vacationing on Fire Island, had a rare form of cancer, which, the doctor explained, might be related to a new infectious disease. I had never heard of the cancer and asked the doctor how to spell it. When I disconnected the call, I was both thrilled and confused. Thrilled because the physicians received a call, but confused about the internist’s insistence that I relay his message right away.

A few days later, another doctor called. Then another and then another. All asking for consultations. The slow trickle of phone calls turned into a steady stream throughout the summer and into the fall and winter. Soon, the doctors needed a second line.

Then patients began calling. They were anxious to talk to anyone about their symptoms. “What do I do?” “How can the doctors help?” “What medicine is available?” Some patients cried, other’s talked about their families, their dashed hopes, their regrets. Many were lonely — reaching out to a stranger just for human contact. I could only listen, take their messages, and excuse myself when another call came in. How does one interpret the anxiety in a stranger’s voice and write it down on a sterile white pad?

I worked for the answering service for another two years before moving on. My children grew older, my husband and I refinanced our mortgage at a lower rate, I finally got a car. My husband picked up more overtime at work. Life evolved into something better.

I never worked that answering service again. But those two I.D. specialists are still in the book, still practicing, unlike many of the other doctors on the boards who moved on or retired.

The summer of 1982 was just one in a long thread of summers that saw life changes — through birthdays and graduations and new hopes that painted life sweet. But 1982 was the only summer I remember so vividly because it was the beginning of the explosion known as AIDS, and I talked to some of its first victims. And that’s what I remember: As my life flourished, theirs probably ceased soon after; there was no cure. There wouldn’t be a summer of ’85 or ’91 or ’06 for them. The bright glow of a future faded the same year they got the disease. There would be no second glass of wine, no new Christmas presents, no photos of retirement.

Today, things are different. AIDS is just another disease. It’s still fatal on one level, but people have long-term treatments to prolong their lives. Ebola’s the new killer. But years ago, AIDS was the Ebola of the times.

And as for me, I still hear the hesitation in the voices that ask, “Can the doctor help me?” and in a strained whisper I could only say, “I don’t know.” In some ways those voices focused me on how small we all are against the randomness of life — the voices of people I never saw, who connected through a phone line so many summers ago.

Jill Evans’s writing has appeared in Newsday. She lives in Patchogue.