The Calls That Stay

Most calls blur together. Addresses fade. Times blur. Details soften around the edges.

But there are some calls that don’t leave.

They stay with you in quiet, unexpected ways, long after the report is written, the rig is cleaned, and the shift ends.

They show up when you least expect them.

In the middle of the night.

In the grocery store.

When you hear a certain tone of voice.

When you pass a house that looks just a little too familiar.

The calls that stay aren’t always the most dramatic ones. Sometimes they’re the quietest.

The kid who looked like yours.

The patient who thanked you right before things went wrong.

The moment you realized there was nothing more you could do — and had to do it anyway.

These calls don’t announce themselves as trauma at the time.

You do your job.

You stay calm.

You move on.

That’s what you’re trained to do.

But the body remembers. It remembers the weight of the scene. The helplessness. The responsibility. The moment where time seemed to slow…and then never fully restarted.

No one teaches you how to make room for that. There’s no debrief built into most shifts. No ritual for release. No protected space to say, “That one stayed with me.”

So the calls that stay become internal. They settle into your nervous system. They shape how safe the world feels. They subtly alter how close you allow yourself to get to people, especially the ones you love most.

You might notice:

• A tightness in your chest that comes out of nowhere

• A sudden wave of anger or sadness that doesn’t match the moment

• Difficulty sleeping

• A constant scanning for danger

• Or an emotional distance you don’t remember choosing

You might tell yourself it’s just stress. That you should be over it by now. That others have seen worse.

But trauma isn’t a competition.

And the calls that stay don’t stay because you’re weak. They stay because you cared. Because you were present in a moment that mattered. Because you were responsible for something fragile and human.

In EMS culture, we often assume that if something truly affected you, you’d know right away.

But that’s not how it works.

Many of the calls that stay don’t surface until years later, when life slows down enough for your nervous system to exhale.

When you’re finally safe enough to feel.

And when they do surface, they can feel confusing. Disorienting. Like something from the past suddenly has power over the present.

This is where people often start to wonder if something is wrong with them.

There isn’t.

This is what happens when experiences go unprocessed. Not because you avoided them, but because there was never space to process them.

What first responders need isn’t to “forget” these calls. They need permission to integrate them.

To talk about them without being seen as dramatic.

To name the weight without being told to toughen up.

To be supported in making meaning out of what they witnessed, instead of carrying it alone.

Because the calls that stay don’t disappear on their own. But when they’re acknowledged, spoken, and held in safe spaces, they soften.

They lose some of their sharpness.

They stop ambushing the present.

If you’re carrying calls that still visit you — even years later — let this land gently:

You are not broken.

You are not weak.

You are not failing to “move on.”

You are human.

And you were never meant to hold these moments alone.

This is part of what lives in the space between calls.