I worked as a triple zero call-taker for six months. It hardened my heart and changed my view of humanity | Bunny Banyai

Bunny Banyai

Feb. 10, 2025, 2 p.m.

Having the saddest, harshest elements of society nipping at my heels chipped away at my progressive ideals. The line between self-preservation and dissociation began to blur

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For six months in 2023, I worked as an ambulance call-taker at Triple Zero Victoria, then known as the Emergency Services Telecommunications Authority. I had always been deeply curious about the job and my own experiences taught me that one kind, reassuring voice – or its opposite – can change the way you process terrible experiences.

I expected the job would imbue me with a sharpened sense of what’s important, a greater sense of purpose and worldly understanding. Though the lessons were relentless, crashing in with the force and frequency of guillotining waves, they were of a practical rather than existential nature: what a person’s breathing sounds like when their oxygen levels are critically low (like a plastic bottle being crushed in the palm of a hand), what to do in the event of a suspected heart attack or when a baby is born not breathing.