Saving a life

It's not every day (rather night) one can save a life, but I did once. I think.
At the time, I worked for a newspaper that came out mornings. That meant a lot of us had to work late at night getting the paper out.
This one particular night, a Friday as I recall, at about 12:45 a.m. the telephone on my desk rings. I answer it, a little distrubed to have to do it as we'd had a heavy night and were finally getting things wrapped up for the final deadline at 1 a.m.
I put the telephone to my ear and said, "Hello."
A woman responded, almost screaming, "I'm going to kill that bastard!"
I thought a second, ask her, "What?"
I'd heard right the first time because for the second time she said the same thing: "I'm going to kill that bastard!"
I glanced at the clock on the wall. The big hand clicked another minute closer to the 1 a.m. deadline.
"Lady," I told the woman, "You can't do that right now. You're going to have to wait."
The moment of silence followed by an incredulous, "Whaaat?"
"Lady," I said again, "I know you've got your problems, but if you kill him right now you have no idea the problems you are going to cause for us!" I was already imagining chasing the details and looking for a name after hearing of the shooting on the police "squawk box" or radio tuned to the police department radio frequency. There were two newspapers in the town. The other paper had the afternoon slot, and we were competitive. So I knew we'd have to have the story before the other paper had a whack at it! Sounds nutty? Yes, it was.
The woman on the phone kept saying, "Whaaat? Whaaat? Whaaat?"
She obviously thought she had a true nut on the telphone.
I just repeated once again, "Lady, I know you have problems, but you will create a lot, I mean a lot of problems for us if you shoot the bastard (I purposely used that term, even though for all I knew he might have been a fine fellow with a pain-in-the you-know-what for a wife) now...You just can't do it."
Another, slow, "Whaat?"
"I tell you what," I said as an idea to mollify her hit me, "If you wait until tomorrow evening at six and call me, I'll get a reporter and a photographer out to see you shoot him."
"Whaaat?"
I didn't repeat myself. I didn't have, too. She just mumbled a few unintelligible words and hung up!
The next night when I came on duty, I had the police reporter check to see if anyone had been shot in the city about the time the lady called or anytime after. No one had.
I waited for the phone call to send the reporter and photographer out, but I never got it.
So, maybe I saved someone's life.
She may still be telling this story, too, all about the nut she got when she called a newspaper late one night!