While I can’t speak for other countries and how they handle procedures upon receiving an emergency call, in America, when someone dials 9-1-1 and then hangs up, a police officer will immediately be dispatched to the geolocation that the phone used to call the Emergency line was received from.
It’s a failsafe that’s worked out between emergency services and phone companies. Since cell phones had yet to become commonplace in 1998, meaning Landlines were a thing, it was incredibly simple to retrieve our address and send a police presence to the house.
Not only that but by giving the minor amounts of details that I had, such as mommy and daddy fighting and blood, along with it being nighttime, not one but two police cars would be sent along with an ambulance.
And due to the rapid response time of the local police department, within the next five minutes, there would be a pounding on the door…if they didn’t just kick it in, considering I mentioned blood and fighting.
"WHAT HAVE YOU DONE," Amanda screamed before…
SMACK
She struck me with enough force that it could have seriously injured me had I been a normal six-year-old, which was precisely why I not only didn’t dodge the open-hand palm strike…aka slap to the face, but also dramatically fell to the ground before unleashing tears and screams of agony.
And I must have been doing a damn good job because no sooner than my body hit the ground then did Amanda realize what she had just done.
Kneeling down, she attempted to console me and take me into her embrace while saying calming words, but I felt like rubbing salt into her fresh wounds and kicked at the ground while attempting to scoot closer to my Father.
"No…noo…stay away…" I said in a frightened manner, making Amanda flinch. And it was this final nail in the coffin that made the emotional dam burst in her head, as tears began freely falling from her eyes while she stared blankly at the hand that she had used to strike my face.
"See that, ugh, Amanda, even your son is scared of you now…what kind of mother hits her child for calling in a domestic dispute." Struggling to his feet as if he had a grievous injury when, in reality, he had missed anything vital, my Father motioned for me to come to him.
So I did,
"Daddy…Mommy…mommy did this?" I asked with fake tears covering my scared expression.
"I…no…I didn’t, he…" Amanda babbled nearly incoherently, and that was when they came.
BANG BANG BANG,
"ORANGE COUNTY SHERIFFS OFFICE!" 6 armed deputies, with guns drawn and flashlights out, burst into the front door and stumbled onto the scene of the kitchen, and upon not only seeing my Father’s state and the bloodied tile floor but also recognizing him as a fellow deputy, immediately pounced on Amanda.
For the next couple of minutes, there was a flurry of activity in our house, as the outside street was painted with red and blue lights as more and more police cars showed up at the home of a fellow deputy.
My dad had been a member of the OCSO, *Orange County Sheriff’s Office* for over 15 years by this point, so to them, it was a big deal. They treated it as such, especially after loading my Father onto a gurney and prepping him for the ambulance that would take him to the hospital.
"Lawrence, what happened here?" a man I had seen multiple times and recognized as the sergeant my Father worked under asked while stopping the paramedics from pushing him into the back of the ambulance.
"She went off the deep end. I don’t know what else to say, Chuck. I had set up a dinner for Valentine’s Day, but when she came home, she threw divorce papers at me."
"When I refused to sign them and tried to work things out, she flipped out, grabbed a knife, and attacked me." Since the paramedics had removed the knife, my Father was holding a bandage patch over the wound while speaking.
"And the 911 call?" Sargent Chuck asked.
"That was Taylor; I left him and little Brenden in their playpen while I made dinner and set the table, but when he heard our argument, he must have climbed out of the playpen again; he’s at the age where he recently started doing that as of late." Looking back toward the house, where my grandparents had Brenden and me in their care, my Father continued speaking.
"I’ve always taught my children to dial 911 when there’s an emergency, and he did just that. Must have grabbed one of the phones off the end table in the living room and used it."
"Hes a good kid; you did well teaching him. Had he not called us, who knows what more could have happened? I wouldn’t be surprised if we ended up having to come out here for a homicide call had he not…so what do you want to do? File Charges?" Sargent Chuck was hesitant to act immediately, mainly because my Father was well-liked and known in the department, so he wanted his opinion before taking further action.
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"I’m not pressing charges, but I’ll need a report filed on her so that I can use it in divorce court…" I watched as my Father looked from me and Brenden toward the back of a police car where Amanda was balling her eyes out while in handcuffs.
"Right, I will keep her overnight then and do as you ask; I will also try to keep it under wraps; the last thing you need is the news media showing up and the tagline, "Local Deputy stabbed multiple times by Crazed wife" on the ten o’clock news."
"I assume your parents will take the kids for the night?"
"Yeah, they’ve been complaining that I don’t let them stay over enough, so they can stay there for a couple of days till I get out of the hospital and clean up the kitchen."
After hearing that, I stopped eavesdropping on their conversation and struggled to hide my smirk from the world. Multiple deputies had already spoken to me about what I saw and had me make a statement.
Still, since I was only a "child," they couldn’t really do much with it, especially since I spoke in broken sentences and gave vague details.
And with that, the night came to a close, with Amanda being carted off to the station, my Father at the hospital, and Brenden and me to our grandparent’s house.