It wasn't loud. It didn't need to be. It came out of the phone's speaker in Keturah's voice, level and clear, from somewhere around Glynis's collarbone.
"Ma'am, this is Cholla Springs Emergency Communications. You are holding a phone with an active nine-one-one call on it. This line is recorded. I heard you take this phone from my caller, and I heard what you said. I need you to give the phone back to her right now."
Glynis looked down.
I've thought a lot, since then, about what she must have seen. When you leave the call screen on that kind of phone, the call doesn't end. It just shrinks. It becomes a little green capsule up in the corner of the screen with a phone icon and a timer. She'd been looking at the Photos app, at my videos, at her husband in thumbnail after thumbnail, and she hadn't seen that the green capsule was there, ticking: 911, 6:48, 6:49, 6:50. Now she did.
I have never in my life seen a person go still the way Glynis Hollister went still. Not frozen, exactly. Frozen implies something sudden. It was more like watching someone discover that the floor they were standing on was the lid of something. Her face didn't change so much as stop. Her hands stayed exactly where they were. Behind her, the haze over the pump house was thinning, drifting across the pool, which shone in the sun as though nothing on earth were wrong with it.
"Ma'am," said Keturah, "can you hear me?"
"Yes," Glynis whispered.
"What is your name?"
There was a long pause.
"Glynis Hollister."
"Mrs. Hollister, I understand that's your husband who's hurt. Help is about two minutes out. The best thing you can do for him right now is give that phone back to the person who's taking care of him. Can you do that for me?"