Operator ignores 4-year-old girl’s call for help, regrets it for life

The protagonist of our story is Lizzie Kti, a four-year-old girl from New Orleans who, at her young age, will be involved in a stressful and chaotic situation in which any adult would have lost her temper, while she knew exactly what to do at all times, showing everyone that a child’s maturity is measured by more than just age and height.

Lizzie and her family had lived in New Orleans all their lives. Well, considering that Lizzie was only 4 years old when this story took place, we can say that her family had lived there much longer than she had, even though both her mother and father were American citizens of Italian origin. However, being the children of Italian immigrants never made the Kti family feel inferior to the rest, and they felt as American as anyone else in the country.

Now, just because they liked living in the US did not mean that they had renounced the culture of their origins and had deeply ingrained the customs of Italian culture in their daily lives, especially in gastronomy. It is true that anyone you ask if they like pizza in the United States or the whole world in general, the answer you get is always yes. Who doesn’t like pizza? But for the Kti family, pizza was not only part of their cuisine; it was a ritual, something sacred to celebrate their Italian roots and their love of family.

So, every Tuesday, the whole family—Mr. and Mrs. Kti, Tiffany and Marco, and their daughter Lizzie—would go out to dinner at their favorite pizza restaurant in New Orleans, Johnny’s Pizza. And when they couldn’t all go together because of work or health reasons, they didn’t give up the tradition and ordered their pizzas delivered. There was never a Tuesday when the Kti family home was not filled with the sweet aroma of melted cheese with tomato and oregano. They had never failed.

But for everything, there is a first time, and unfortunately, the Kti family had a Tuesday when they could not fulfill their tradition because of a terrible event. It was Tuesday, and Lizzie had come home from kindergarten excited to have her favorite pizza for dinner: a margarita with extra parmesan cheese. What the little girl couldn’t have imagined was that her favorite day of the week and the family tradition of pizza on Tuesdays would end up becoming something else entirely, something the little girl would take a long time to forget.

That week, Mrs. Kti and her daughter were home alone because her husband was away on a business trip, but nothing was going to stop mother and daughter from enjoying a delicious Italian-style dinner. Tiffany was pregnant, and since she was already in the middle of her second trimester of pregnancy, and the doctors had recommended her to rest more during this pregnancy—seeing that her blood pressure and sugar levels had been destabilized—Mrs. Kti had all the time in the world to take care of her eldest daughter at home.

Lizzie was thrilled with the news of having a baby brother. Her parents had already found out the sex of the baby and shared it with the whole family, and the little girl kept caressing her mother’s belly and talking to her future brother. “Can you hear me, Patrick? I’m your big sister, Lizzie. I will teach you everything you need to know. We’ll play together for hours and eat pizza every Tuesday,” Lizzie said excitedly to her mother’s belly.

That Tuesday in particular, Tiffany had had a pregnancy checkup, and the doctors had again warned her that her blood pressure was very low, and she should try to get more rest and avoid shocks. These were guidelines that she tried to follow to the letter, but she found it difficult taking care of an energetic four-year-old like Lizzie. And if there was one thing that made little Lizzie special, it was her energy. She was inexhaustible; she was always playing, laughing, and trying to learn new things. She was a miniature earthquake, and that filled her parents with happiness, while at the same time, it left them without energy.

After two delicious margarita pizzas for dinner, mother and daughter lay down to watch a cartoon movie. It was Tuesday and kindergarten was the next day, so Lizzie was not long for bedtime. They would watch a little of the movie, and then her mother would help her clean her teeth and put her to bed. “We’ll watch The Little Mermaid for a little while, and then we’ll go to sleep, okay my love? Tomorrow there is school and you have to sleep,” her mother told her affectionately, stroking her hair.

Unfortunately, none of that ever happened. After turning off the television and heading upstairs to clean her teeth, Lizzie heard a noise that paralyzed her. She couldn’t see her mother anywhere, and it didn’t look like anyone had entered the house either, but she knew that the knock she had heard was coming from downstairs and that it couldn’t mean anything good.

“Mommy, are you there? Mommy, can you hear me?” asked the little girl in a trembling voice as she walked down the steps very slowly. When she arrived in the living room, what the child saw left her speechless. She felt her heart begin to race and her mind flood with ideas, but she could not think clearly. The scene before her far surpassed anything a girl her age had ever experienced before.

“The phone! I have to use the phone, of course. But who do I call? What was the emergency number? I can’t remember,” the girl cursed herself, hurrying towards the phone on the other side of the room. She didn’t know what to do or who to call, but she pressed several buttons on the phone and automatically dialed the last number her mother must have called: the pizzeria.

After two rings of waiting, someone picked up the phone on the other end of the line, but whoever did so was not willing to listen to the girl, not even paying attention to her. “Hello? I need help, please. Can you send an ambulance to my house? My name is Lizzie Kti, my father is away, and I need help, please sir,” pleaded the girl in a hurried manner, without even stopping to listen to who had picked up the phone.

On the other end of the line, a new waiter at the pizzeria answered in a dry and curt tone, “You’ve made a mistake. We don’t take emergency calls here. Call somewhere else. I have a lot of work to attend to,” and hung up the phone without even waiting to hear the girl’s answer.

Lizzie couldn’t believe her bad luck. She deduced that she had the wrong number, but she hadn’t even been able to ask the man for the emergency number to make the call. Still holding the phone in her hand and avoiding turning around so as not to see the terrible sight behind her again, the girl quickly thought of other ways to ask for help but discarded them all as soon as they came to mind.

“Mom would never let me go out on the street at this hour to ask a neighbor for help. I’m too little, and this town at night isn’t so safe. And Dad’s not around. I don’t remember his cell phone number either. I don’t remember anything,” she said to herself as she gripped the phone tighter and tighter. What could she do? She was just a child, and she didn’t remember the emergency numbers or the police. So, she pressed more buttons on the phone, hitting the redial button and calling the pizzeria again.

Luckily, this time the phone would be answered by someone else—someone who already knew Lizzie and her family and would be willing to help her in any circumstance. “Hello, this is Nora. You have reached Gian’s Pizzeria, how may I help you?”

Lizzie realized it was the same place she had dialed before, but this time she heard a woman speaking. Her voice sounded very familiar, but she was so nervous that she didn’t realize who it was. The woman’s voice was sweet and kind, and as the girl listened to her, she felt she could trust her and told her what had happened at full speed. “Hello, please don’t hang up, please help me. I need help. Come to my house quickly,” pleaded Lizzie, her voice trembling.

“Oh, okay honey, calm down. My name is Nora. I’ll help you with whatever you need, but first, I need you to calm down and talk slower. Can you tell me your mother’s or father’s name? Are they in there with you, honey?” the woman asked.

Hearing about her parents, Lizzie felt a pang in her heart, and tears began to well up in her eyes. She swallowed hard and tried to calm herself as she listened to the kind waitress who had picked up the phone and tried to help her. “Their names are Tiffany and Marco Kti. My name is Lizzie. We just had pizza right now. I’m sure my mom called you guys; we always eat pizza from the same place. You have to come now, otherwise something bad will happen,” replied the little girl, glad that this woman helped her.

At the sound of the last name Kti, the waitress gasped. “Is that your last name? Your parents are Marco and Tiffany Kti?”

“That’s right, miss. Those are my parents. Please come quickly, I don’t know what could happen,” pleaded the girl.

“Okay sweetheart, we have your address. Don’t worry, you must be little Lizzie. I’m the waitress you always ask for more cheese for your pizzas! But that’s irrelevant now. I’m going to call the emergency services right now. Stay where you are, okay? You’ll hear the ambulances soon,” Nora said, and Lizzie hung up the phone herself.

Lizzie sat on the floor by the phone and waited. She stood there with her eyes closed, waiting and trembling with fear. She had no idea what was going to happen, but at least she had done her best to help. Fifteen minutes later, which seemed like an eternity to the girl, she heard an ambulance parking in front of her house and saw the lights reflected on her wall. A few moments later, someone knocked loudly on the door, and she was startled but decided to take action and open the door without asking.

Seeing the doctors, Lizzie could no longer contain herself and began to scream urgently, “Over there! My mommy is in there. You have to save her, please! My mommy is sick, she’s fallen and won’t open her eyes.” The little girl pointed to her mother and led the men to her in the center of the room.

What the paramedics encountered was not something a four-year-old girl had to witness, much less alone. Lizzie’s mother lay unconscious on the floor. She had been hit on the head and had a small bleeding gash on her forehead. Emergency crews rushed to take her pulse and check her vitals. “She’s alive. We have to stabilize her and get her to the hospital as soon as possible. This woman is pregnant!” shouted the team leader, examining Lizzie’s mother.

In the meantime, a woman dressed as a paramedic crouched down to Lizzie’s level and spoke softly to calm her down. “So you’re Lizzie, huh? You called the pizza place for help?” she asked and smiled at her. The little girl nodded wordlessly. “That was a very clever little girl. We’re going to help your mother. Don’t worry, everything will be fine.”

“She has my baby brother inside,” the girl added, pointing to her mother’s belly. The woman looked toward her fellow paramedics. “We know. Don’t worry, we’re going to help you both,” she assured the little girl, and as they lifted her mother onto a stretcher, she reached out and escorted Lizzie to the ambulance.

Once at the hospital, the doctors managed to contact the girl’s father and explain what had happened so that he could return to his wife and daughter’s side as soon as possible. Upon arriving next to Lizzie, the little girl burst into tears and threw herself into her father’s arms, quickly and vaguely explaining to him everything that had happened and what she had done to help her mother.

“I forgot the emergency number, Daddy. Good thing the girl at the pizzeria helped me and called the ambulance. We have to go see her and thank her. Her name is Nora,” she said to her father, hugging him tightly. “We will do it, honey. We owe a lot to that woman. As soon as Mom is fully recovered and back home, we will pay a visit to the pizzeria,” confirmed Mr. Kti, very happy to know that both his wife and his little girl were well after all.

A week later, Lizzie’s mother was discharged from the hospital. Apparently, she had suffered a severe drop in blood pressure and blood sugar that caused her to faint. She just needed to rest and better control her diet for the rest of the pregnancy to avoid another scare. A few days later, as the girl’s father had promised, the family went to Gian’s Pizza for dinner and asked for Nora.

As soon as they arrived, the woman came out with a huge smile, knowing who was looking for her. “You must be Lizzie, and you’re Tiffany! I hope everything is going well and you are feeling better,” she said kindly to the family. “Yes, thank you so much. Lizzie has been going on and on about how you guys helped them while I was away, and that’s why we’re here. I have something for you,” Marco said, pulling something out of his pocket and handing it to Nora in front of the stunned gaze of his co-workers and the rest of the diners: a check for $2,000.

The woman looked at the check in her hand, and her eyes widened. “Oh no, my God, no! I didn’t do it to get anything. I can’t take it. I was just being a good citizen,” the waitress tried to refuse, handing the check back to Mr. Kti. But Lizzie’s father wouldn’t take no for an answer, and Nora finally accepted the check gratefully.

While the family and the waitress were talking animatedly on the other side of the bar, there was someone who was deeply regretting having been so nasty to little Lizzie: the bartender she called on her first attempt to call 911, and who hung up on her without even listening to her. His name was Thomas, and when he saw the check the family had just given his companion, he was overcome with demons and cursed himself for not having been the one to help that family. Maybe next time.

The lesson of the Kti family’s moving story is that helping others is not an option, but a necessity. We don’t know when we will need help, and if we are not open to listen to those who are in need, no one will help us when we need it. We should never forget that.

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