Popping the champagne at halftime

Francesca Hamilton was a very well-known emergency dispatcher in Gotham City.

But she was famous not because she excelled at her job, but for quite the opposite reason: she frequently neglected her duties at work.

Once, a woman returned home and suspected someone had broken in. Not wanting to alert the intruder, she called the police and pretended she was ordering takeout.

Had she reached a quick-witted, responsible dispatcher, her plan might have worked. Unfortunately, the person who answered that day was Francesca Hamilton.

Francesca dismissed it as a prank call. In the end, the woman was murdered by the burglar.

On another occasion, a professor's wife suddenly collapsed and lost consciousness. The professor performed CPR on his wife with one hand while using the other to call 911 for help.

He told Francesca, who answered the call, that his wife had collapsed and needed an ambulance. But Francesca simply said, "Okay," then hung up without calling one. Luckily, one of the professor's students happened to drive past and took her to the hospital.

After those two incidents, word of Francesca spread. For a while, Gotham's citizens would ask whether they were speaking to Francesca before reporting an emergency.

As for why the Police Department still hadn't fired her, that was, of course, because she had a shady arrangement with the police commissioner. She was one of Commissioner Rob's people.

"Francesca, how's it going?" an older police officer asked her.

"Not great. The phone's been ringing all night. It's driving me nuts, and they're all calling about the same thing," Francesca said irritably. "Don't they get it? Nobody has time to deal with this, and nobody wants to."

"All right, I'll tell the commissioner that."

"Don't. Tell him I've carried out his assignment perfectly. No problems whatsoever."

"...All right."

"Oh,