Emergency call takers receive calls from citizens in distress, in pain or perhaps just lonely. Emergency communications centers in Ogden, Utah; Wasilla, Alaska; New Orleans, Louisiana; and Austin, Texas, receive frightening calls from an elderly woman whose 83-year-old husband was assaulted, an 8-year-old who calls for help after her father collapses, a frequent caller who is being taunted by women in bikinis, a man who requests a wellness check on his brother who was recently diagnosed with COVID-19, and a woman involved in a boating accident in the freezing river waters of Alaska.