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story20315.xml

born-digital

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2006-09-08

CHARLIES SIDE OF THE WORLD TRADE CENTER STORY PART 1

My workday started out in a pretty typical fashion. I got to my desk that morning around 8:20 and started working at my computer. I fired up all the different applications I normally used and checked my on-line version of The Wall Street Journal to see what was happening in the business world. I also started thinking about what I wanted for lunch.

When did the day go from mundane to murderous? When I heard the first whoosh. It came from the ventilation ducts. Other sounds followed. A scratching of some kind on the windows. Then something that sounded like small pebbles being thrown against the windows. I decided to investigate. I turned to the window closest to my cubicle, the one overlooking New Jersey and the south side of the North Tower (WTC I). As I walked over to the window, I could see hundreds of thousands of blank pieces of photocopier paper floating by. It actually looked like a snow storm with large flakes of snow. At the window, I looked up and saw the North Tower on fire. There was a faint smell. It smelled something like jet fuel and grew stronger as time passed.

I went to another window. From there, I could see the east and south side of the North Tower as well as the plaza below. There was a band of fire circling WTC I. I remember thinking that there must have been some type of explosion. A deliberate act of terrorism did not occur to me. Then I went back to the window closest to my cubicle and stood on the heating/air conditioner vent. I got as close to the window as possible so I could see as much as I could. Vast numbers of photocopier paper were still floating out there. Looking down, I could see the top of the Marriot Hotel and there was debris on its roof. The flames around WTC I started looking pretty nasty. There was a lot of black smoke. It was about 8:50 a.m.

There were announcements on the PA system, asking people in WTC II, my building, to remain calm. We were told there had been an incident in WTC I, but WTC II was in no immediate danger. We were asked to let the people from the other building evacuate first. That made sense to me. If everybody evacuated, we would all get stuck in the bottleneck downstairs. I stayed put. But other people in my building didnt listen to the announcements. They left.

I was hoping that my wife, Catherine, was still home but there was no answer when I phoned there. Then I remembered an incident from last year. There had been an elevator accident on the other side of my building and my mother, who lives in Chicago, had found out about it and called to see if everything was alright. I hadnt even known about it until she called me. Thinking about that incident, I had the feeling she would be hearing about this one before long. Fortunately, this time I knew something had happened in the World Trade Center before CNN was broadcasting it to the world. So I called my mother in Chicago and told her I was okay. No matter what you hear, I said. Im okay. WTC I is on fire, but its the other building. Not mine. My mother listened to me, but she had no idea what I was talking about. I told her I didnt have the time to talk, because I had to try to reach Catherine. So she asked me to keep her posted and we hung up. I tried my wifes work phone number and got her voicemail. At that time, Catherine had a very long greeting on her voicemail at HarperCollins and it was always exasperating to have to wait to leave her a message.

The smell of fuel was getting quite strong now and people were beginning to head down the emergency stairs. I started to join them. I got to the emergency exit, but when I saw people flying down the stairs, I thought, I dont need this right now. It was the other building that was on fire. The people dashing down the stairs could easily get hurt in their rush and I didnt want to be one of them. I decided to wait.

Then I saw a man from the North Tower die. He jumped out a window and he was very calm. He looked about my age. Thinning hair on top. Wearing a long-sleeved casual dress shirt and beige dress pants not unlike the pair I had on. He jumped from above me. I was on the 68th floor, and he must have come from maybe the 85th floor, maybe higher. I watched him go all the way down. He looked to his left and right on the way down, and when he got close to the ground, he looked straight at it, then his head was a red explosion. Blood bloomed like an early fall flower. As far as I know, he was the first person to jump. He made it look so easy. Here was a man who might have been thinking about what he wanted for lunch just a few minutes ago. He had gone from routine decisions to life and death decisions in what? ten minutes? Ten seconds?

I found myself thinking how futile life was. I had spent my adulthood planning for my future. I had money in the bank, a career, a wife. But I had denied myself certain luxuries so that I could have a financially secure future. Now, after watching that man die, I suddenly saw the futility of all that planning. I should have lived more. What was the point?

There were four to five standing us at the window. I started to walk away, but then I turned back and saw more people falling. This time there was a man and a woman. The woman wore a beige mid-length dress that fluttered in the wind. She was not calm. All her movements screamed of a panic that was beyond panic. For one brief awful moment, our eyes met. I felt some small part of what she was feeling, and I couldnt bear it. I got away from the window. I wouldnt go back. But she comes back to me from time to time. She is the one who invades my nightmares.

At that time, I figured out that the fire must be extremely hot, and these people had known they were going to die. The thought of a death on impact was better than being incinerated. I thought some of them knew they were jumping out windows. Others may not have known. There was a lot of smoke. Some may have thought they were going through a door, not a window. But some probably knew and made the choice.

A colleague came running to tell us a plane had hit WTC I. I asked him how he knew. He said he saw it on television. I asked him where the television was. He said it was in his office. So I ran down to his office, but a different story was up on the visual screen of his computer. I decided not to wait for the story to come back on. I wanted to leave the building.

I went to my desk, trying to figure out if there was anything I should bring with me. I grabbed my set of personalized pens and added it to the stuff already in my briefcase. I had quit smoking months ago, but nevertheless, there was a pack of cigarettes in my briefcase. It was still semi-wrapped in cellophane and I had had it for maybe ten months. It was the last pack I had purchased when I quit smoking and I had only smoked one cigarette from it my last nearly a year ago.

I put my cell phone in my left back pocket and headed towards the elevator.

The PA system was asking people in my building to go back to work. I still headed for the elevators. By this time, the fire alarms were going off. When I got to the elevator, it was already deactivated. I decided to go back to my desk and call Catherines secretary. I knew I had those numbers on the mainframe. I was getting nervous.

I placed my briefcase on the desktop behind my chair. I sat down and called Catherines work number. At the same time I was looking for her coworkers phone numbers. I was hoping to not have to call her boss. Watching that first man jump and hit the ground had really affected me. I wanted to hug my wife and then go home.

I knew that the phone numbers for a couple of Catherines colleagues were right in front of me, but I couldnt see them. I had to listen to Catherines very long voicemail greeting before I could leave a message. Finally I heard the beep. I started to leave a message and as I did so, the building jolted. The force of it tossed me around my cubicle. I remember thinking, Finish the message or Catherine will worry. I finished it as quickly as I could. Later that day, I would learn what I said. I said: Catherine, this is Chaaa-arrr-rll-lie. I want to come see you. I want to hold you. And then I want to go home. But at that moment in time, I didnt know what I was saying. I was trying to process what was happening around me. Once again I heard a whoosh surging through the ventilation ducts. This one was much, much more pronounced than the first one. It also sounded like large pieces of furniture were being moved across the floor above me.

The building lurched to one side. I thought it wasnt going to stop going in the direction it was going. Then the building started wobbling. This I knew was bad. The thought that I was about to die ran through my head. I was going to die. The building was going to fall over. I was convinced WTC I had fallen into WTC II, my building. I was going to die with no one around me. No one was going to witness my death. It all seemed so meaningless. During all this, I was still on the phone. Throughout the entire message I was leaving for Catherine, the building was moving. It was like my desk was on a platform of Jell-O. Not good when you are 68 floors up.

Then the building stopped wobbling. I stood up, grabbed my briefcase, and headed for the emergency exit. The floors were not right. They looked normal, but I felt I was walking on slanted boards. I saw a colleague come from what I thought was one of the offices, although later I found out he was coming from the coffee room. Get out, now! he yelled.

I reached a door leading to a hallway. Through the doors glass window, I saw a mess of what looked like a metal beam or beams, concrete, maybe ceiling debris, a chaos of junk, and it was all on the other side of the fire door. I knew I would not be able to reach the fire escape.

I started thinking, Im alive. I want to get out of this building alive. Reevaluating what I might need and worried the briefcase might inhibit my escape, I took out the cigarettes and put them in my pocket. Running back to my desk, I tossed the briefcase on my chair, thinking I could retrieve it in a few weeks. At the time, it wasnt an unreasonable idea. After the bombing in 1993, people were allowed to retrieve their belongings after a few weeks.

Then I headed for the other emergency exit. I reached another door and, as I started to touch the handle to check for heat, I realized I could just barely see through the window on the door. What I saw was a lot of debris and a thick white mist. But I could see the emergency exit and thought I could make a dash through the debris and get to safely to the exit. I succeeded. I reached the fire escape stairs. But as soon as I got in the door, I noticed a huge deep crack in the wall opposite the door. My God, the building is splitting apart is what went through my head. The floors and stairs still felt slanted. I went down the stairs as fast as I could. I didnt want to twist an ankle or break a leg, so I was not exactly running. Just moving as fast as I could. No one else came through the emergency door behind me. I passed floor after floor but no one came through the emergency doors on those floors either. I was alone. There was no one behind me. And for awhile, there was no one in front of me. Finally, after several flights, I started to run into people. I think I was somewhere between the 50th and 55th floor when I stopped seeing those giant cracks in the wall. The stairs and landing finally seemed level. But I was still thinking there was a good chance I wouldnt get out alive.

Traffic down the fire escape stairway started getting slower. It was very frustrating. I just wanted to get out of the building. All my senses were telling me we were living on borrowed time.

We reached the 44th floor. The 44th floor was the Sky Lobby and elevator exchange. You had to get off one elevator and get on another if you wanted to go further up or further down. At this floor, we had to exit our staircase to get to another one. The staircase door was closed. As they came up to it, people stopped, which forced everyone behind them for several flights up to stop as well. The people close to the door didnt know what to do next. They were afraid to open it. No one up front wanted to make a decision. They kept hesitating, and others behind them started getting impatient. Finally, a collective command from a good portion of the crowd forced the issue. We werent going back up. People started going through the door.

All along the way, women took off their high heels in order to walk down the stairs more easily. Little piles of cast off high heels tossed to the side grew into larger and larger piles the further down we went.

The temperature rose the closer we got to the ground floor. I began to sweat. So did several people around me. I think we were all thinking the same thing that we were descending into a fire. People carrying briefcases and the growing piles of shoes started making me feel angry. Then my anger dissolved as I realized that no one had expected this, and that I myself had almost carried my briefcase down with me. But adrenaline was still coursing through my body. We couldnt move fast enough. An announcement came over the PA system, informing us that our building was safe and there was no need to panic, but if we wanted to exit the building to go ahead and do so. That got a lot of laughs. People started cracking jokes about it.

As we went down, a couple of emergency workers came up. A maintenance guy relayed a radio message that medical assistance was needed up on the 80th or 82nd floor. People were nervous, but no one was panicking. Some even stopped to rest. I couldnt rest. I picked my way around them, careful not to push or shove anyone, but anxious to keep going.

At about the 20th floor, I began to think I might survive. Id be hurt, maybe badly, but I might survive. I wasnt sure, but I thought perhaps a fire ladder or rope might reach as high as the 20th floor. That gave me hope.

Finally, we reached the bottom. It was odd. Eerie. Everything looked familiar in an unfamiliar way. We went through the doors. I was disoriented, then disappointed when I realized I was still not at ground level. We exited out into the concourse level.

We were greeted by emergency workers, mostly firemen, directing us to the escalators leading down to the ground level. There was a jam up by the escalators, so before I went further down, I left the crowd and went over to the two-story windows overlooking the plaza. A security guard started to stop me. Within just a few seconds, a long conversation occurred between our eyes, but there were few actual words spoken. His eyes said, Dont go there. Mine responded, Im going there. He decided to ignore what I was doing. The fear in his eyes released me. I went and looked out. What I saw looked unreal. There was opaque light. Fog. Falling dust. Gray things. Reddish things. Twisted metal. But mostly what I saw was an absence of life. The plaza was usually crowded with people. They werent there.

I returned to the crowd by the escalators. There were two of them. Usually one of them goes up and the other goes down, but neither of them was operating. People were going down on foot. I chose the one closest to me. So did an overweight woman ahead of me who collapsed not far from the bottom. People grew upset, calling for others to climb over her before they did themselves. Some emergency workers climbed up and carried her off.

The rest of us were routed through the mall and underneath to the exit by Borders Bookstore. At this exit, there were two escalators with a staircase between, and I chose the staircase, feeling Id have more control on regular stairs. We were sent across the street to a spot between the Millennium Hotel and the cemetery.

After crossing the street, I turned around and looked up into something surreal. Both towers were still standing. Both towers had smoke pouring from them. I could see flames from WTC I. The fire gave off an eerie sound. It wasnt until that moment that I realized that WTC I had not fallen into my building.

Policemen started instructing us to move away from the area. Hey, buddy, move it, one of the said to me. But then he must have seen some expression cross my face and softened. I just came from that building, I said, pointing at it. I asked him what happened to it. He told me a plane had hit it. No, I dont mean Tower I, I said. What happened to my building, Tower II? He said, Planes hit both towers. Thats when I thought I might be dead. Maybe I was actually dead, and death or my own dying brain was easing me into deaths realm by making it seem like I was alive and looking up at the Twin Towers burning.

The police officer asked if I needed medical assistance. I said no, I just needed to rest. He asked several times, but I kept telling him no, I just needed to rest a minute.

I looked up at the burning towers again. I knew it was something I would never see again.
The sight of those Twin Towers burning was I hate to use the word, but theres no other word for it magnificent. It was just -- magnificent.

I reached in my pocket. I pulled out the pack of stale cigarettes. I took off the wrapping. I was going to start smoking again, right then and there. Then I realized I had no matches. It took me a minute or so to find someone who could give me a light. Then I leaned against a car on the corner of Rector and Church and smoked a very stale cigarette. Nothing ever tasted so good.

When I was done, I started walking, heading towards Broadway. Just before the intersection, I remember seeing a womens shoe, what looked like a piece of an airliner seat, and large pools of blood. I thought then the blood must have come from a passenger who was thrown from the plane, but now I wonder if someone on the ground had been hit with debris. For just a moment, I looked back again at the World Trade Centers burning in the sky, but then turned away, fearing that I would see someone else jump to their death.

I couldnt get a signal on my cell phone. As I headed uptown, there were hordes of people heading down to the World Trade Center. I was definitely going against the flow. Many emergency vehicles were also headed to the area. Fire trucks, police cars, special response vehicle, ambulances, unmarked cars with flashing lights. I asked an officer what he wanted me to do and he asked that I get out of the area. He said he thought the Brooklyn Bridge was still open. I considered for a moment what I should do next. I thought Catherine would probably be at work, so I decided to head up to Midtown.

There were thousands of people on the street. I remember asking myself if this could be normal. Then I started talking to a guy I met along the way. He told me the MTA had shut down the subway. Some businesses were in the processing of closing, although not many yet. I passed Canal Street into Soho. I was starting to get the feeling that I was a bit player in a bad sci-fi movie, although Godzilla had not yet screamed in out of the sky. I headed up Crosby Street. My cell phone still couldnt get a signal. I was even trying to get an analog signal but had no luck.

Going north up Crosby Street, I noticed a man and a woman around my age run out of a building and start looking south towards the World Trade Center. I stopped and asked them if they lived in that building and they said yes. I explained that my cell phone didnt work, that I had been in the World Trade Center, and that I would like to use their telephone to let my wife know I wasnt dead. It was amazing. I didnt even know these people and they invited me up to their apartment at once. The apartment was on the third floor. We took the elevator up and on the way, it gave a jolt. Im sure it wasnt much of a jolt, but a shudder of fear or memory stabbed through me.

The Soho couple couldnt do enough for me. They kept offering me food, water, anything they could think of. They wanted to do something to help. They let me use their telephone, and I called Catherines office. Her secretary answered and said she wasnt there, then hesitatingly asked who I was. When I said I was her husband, she became ecstatic. She explained that Catherine had gotten off the train at Union Square and would be checking back with her in a little while. I asked her to tell Catherine that Id meet her at her office.

After I hung up, the Soho couple asked me to sit for awhile so they could make sure I was all right. The television was on, and I saw the instant replay of my building collapsing. It was 10:00 am and I had been in that building less than half an hour ago.

I asked if I could make another telephone call, this one long distance to Chicago; I wanted to let my mother know I wasnt dead. I knew that if I was watching a replay of my building falling down, she had seen it too. The Soho couple said yes, by all means, please go ahead and make the call. I made the call. When I heard my mothers voice, I could tell she had thought I died in the building. She thanked me several times for calling her. I asked her to call my brothers and sisters to let them know I was okay because I didnt have time right then; I had to go find Catherine. After I hung up, I left, but this time I took the stairs down, not the jolting elevator. The Soho couple wished me luck. I never saw them again.

Back out in the street, I headed north towards Catherines office. Along the way, I struck up conversations several times with perfect strangers who happened to be nearby. I just wanted to talk to people. It would usually come up that I was in WTC II when the plane hit it. Thank God youre alive, people would tell me. Thank God youre alive.

When I got to Union Square, there were thousands of people going every which way. Usually the streets were not this crowded during working hours, but this was not a usual day. Several times I called out Catherines name. I figured I might as well try. This was where she had gotten off the train. Maybe by now her secretary would have told her that I knew she was in Union Square. It was a long shot, but I had nothing to lose.

As I approached Petco, I turned to see the WTC. I could see neither tower. Picking up bits and pieces of conversation around me, I pieced together that now both towers were down. Petco was just locking their doors as I started north again, going up Broadway.

CATHERINES SIDE OF THE WORLD TRADE CENTER STORY

One September morning when I was still working at HarperCollins, I went through my normal morning routine. Showering. Dressing. Preening. As usual, I was late getting out the door. My husband Charlie, as usual, was early. He had left 30 or more minutes before me.

It was a beautiful early autumn day. The sky was so blue. Even half asleep walking to the subway station, I made note of it. I always took the Q train to HarperCollins, and my commute was typically only about 40 minutes door to door. Every now and then, however, there were delays. Trains backed up, or there were switching problems, or track fires. Or the worst: a sick passenger. If a passenger got sick on a train up ahead, you could sit on the bridge or in a tunnel for half an hour or more. The last thing you wanted to hear over the intercom was the conductor saying there was a delay due to a sick passenger.

That morning, there was a delay on the Q train. At first, the conductor didnt say anything at all. I suspected there was a sick passenger on a train up ahead. It was a long delay. All we passengers could do was sit or stand, hoping whatever it was cleared up soon. I hadnt even gotten a seat that morning. All the seats were filled. So I stood in the middle of the train, holding on to the middle pole, and reading a book by one of my authors (Brothers Below Zero by Tor Seidler). I wasnt particularly enjoying it. I didnt feel like reading. Putting my weight first on one foot, then the other, then back again, I was feeling restless and bored. Finally, the conductor decided to make an announcement. But his announcement didnt really offer any information. All he said was that there was a delay due to an incident at the World Trade Center. In my ignorance, I thought, Good. At least its not a sick passenger. But by then, I knew I was going to be extra late getting to work. We hadnt even reached the Manhattan Bridge yet. We were stuck in the tunnel.

The train inched along at a snails pace. The conductor kept saying the delay was due to an incident at the World Trade Center. I continued to try to read.

It took what felt like forever to get out of that tunnel. I was in the middle of a sentence when daylight fell across the page. We were finally on the Manhattan Bridge. I didnt look up. I just decided to keep on reading. At first no one noticed anything. We were all operating at slow speed, I guess, not unlike the Q train we were on.

But then someone noticed.

I heard a womans voice yell out, The Twin Towers are on fire! My eyes were still on a page in the middle of the book when the voice in my head said, No, that cant be. Not both towers. Thats cant be. The book closed. My head turned. And there out the window were both towers with huge smoke clouds billowing up into the sky. The train stopped again, and if the train windows had been open, we would have smelled the smoke. The Twin Towers were so close, you could see the flames inside the buildings windows. Only a narrow ribbon of the East River and a few blocks of lower Manhattan streets separated us from them. Like everyone else, I rushed to the train windows closest to the Twin Towers, pressing my hands against the glass. I felt like I could almost touch them, almost reach right in and touch one of the people in the World Trade Center offices.

One of those people was Charlie. He worked in the World Trade Center.

My hands were shaking so badly, I had trouble getting my purse open to get my cell phone out. And then I had to look his work phone number up on my Palm Pilot. I couldnt find it. Was it not there? Had I never entered it? Of course, it was there but in the chaos of the moment, I couldnt see it on the small screen. Then I found it. I pressed the numbers into my cell. I got a busy signal. My husbands in the World Trade Center, I told the woman next to me. Can I use your cell? But I only got a busy signal on her phone too. I borrowed someone else, then someone elses, then someone elses. None of the cell phones in the train car worked. All I got was busy signals on all the phones I tried.

What floor is he on? someone asked me. I couldnt remember. High, I said. Hes high up.

The Pentagons been hit. I just heard it on my radio, someone else said. Were under attack.

No, it must be an accident, someone answered.

And then we all went silent. There was a slight buzz from the radio, nothing else. We all watched the World Trade Center burn, looking like two giant smoking matchsticks over lower Manhattan.

The intercom was silent. The train conductor had stopped talking about why the train was delayed. Due to an incident at the World Trade Center was a phrase that I would repeat many times that day. But at that particular moment, everyone on the train took a mental step sideways. It wasnt happening. It couldnt be what it looked like. Our senses were deceiving us. As the train started moving again, we were all just on our way to work again, dazed but still stuck in our familiar routines.

Inside my own head, I decided all the people who had been in the World Trade Center must have gotten out somehow. There had been some warning. They knew something was happening, so they had all been evacuated. Thats what I thought. Thats what I decided.

As we approached Canal Street, I considered getting off and going to see what I could find out about Charlie. If I had, I would have been caught in the collapse that was only a few minutes away.

But as the train doors opened, I didnt get off the train. Some weird voice in my head told me that I was already very late for work and I had to get to the office. It was a work day. It wasnt a normal day, but it was a work day. I had to go to work.

The doors closed. The train pulled out of the station. But as we left Canal, I knew I couldnt just go to the office as if nothing had happened. I had to get to Charlie. I had to have a plan.

I started planning my strategy. I knew there was a payphone at Union Square that worked. It was right by Petco. I had seen people use it. Thats where I would go. I would get off at the Union Square stop, use the Petco bathroom (I suddenly had to pee really badly) and then use the payphone that was just outside the Petco door.

And thats what I did. While I was in the Petco bathroom, I finished planning my strategy. I would phone Charlie, and I would phone my office to tell them to sit by the phone in case Charlie called. Then I would walk down to the World Trade Center and stop an ambulance worker to ask where they were taking survivors. Then I would go to whatever hospital that was and find Charlie. That was my plan. I reviewed it again as I walked through the totally empty pet store. The pet store was strange. All the animals were quiet and scared but all the employees were gone, who knows where. Out in the street probably. But despite all the strangeness, I felt I had a good plan.

I left Petco and, standing just outside its door, I looked down the street at the World Trade Center. Yes, it was quite close. I thought I could walk there in about 10 or 15 minutes, maybe less if I walked fast. I went over to the payphone, found a quarter, and dialed my own home number, thinking maybe Charlie was already back home. I got the machine. I left a message, telling him to call me at the office. Then I got another quarter, dialed my office, got my assistant and asked her to please sit by my phone and do nothing but wait for Charlie to call. Then I dialed Charlies number at work, and listened to the ring. I dont know quite what I was expecting. Did I think he was going to answer his phone? Fortunately, he didnt. I got his voicemail. I left a message. It was a pretty lame message. Charlie, your building is on fire. If youre still up there, please … leave. Get out. Go home. Call me at the office. I hung up.

I had just hung up and my hand was still on the receiver when I looked down the street at the World Trade Center again and saw Charlies building collapse.

At first I didnt believe it. I had good reason not to believe it, for the ghost of something was still standing. Much later I learned it was probably the skeleton of the elevator shaft and the smoke surrounding it, but at the time, it was too surreal. The dark ghost faded and slithered down. Burnt clouds exploded in gray and white rolling waves. Someone standing close to me was screaming. A man at my feet was weeping. Another man in a dark blue suit appeared beside me and suddenly I was standing on the single stair just outside the Petco door, trying to get a better look. What happened? I said. The South Tower just fell down, the man beside me said in a perfectly calm, matter-of-fact voice, which I suspect matched my own tone of voice.

The South Tower had fallen. That was where Charlies office was. That was where I had just left a message. How was it possible that his voicemail had worked?

All over Union Square, people were standing in the street, crying, whispering, staring. I was one of them. So much was incomprehensible.

I didnt know what to do. My plan to walk down there and find an ambulance driver didnt seem right anymore, although I couldnt let myself know why.

I needed a new plan.

I decided to call my office again and talk to my boss. Maybe he could offer some advice.

My hands were shaking again, and I had trouble getting another quarter out of my purse. There was some expression on my face that must have reflected the horror in my heart because someone with a camera took my picture. I tried to turn away from him.

I dialed my office number. My assistant, Liz Ann, answered the phone and immediately said, He called. Hes in Soho. Hes walking uptown and will meet you at Harper. Come to the office.

My voice stopped working. My throat closed and I couldnt breathe. I heard something like a gasp coming from my mouth. I clutched the side of the pay phone. Catherine? Liz Anns voice was trying to reach me. Yes, I said. Im on my way. Tell him to wait for me.

I had to walk around stunned pedestrians to get back to the subway, but by the time I got back on the Q train, I felt strangely elated. Charlie was okay. A major catastrophe had occurred, but he had survived it. I still didnt feel normal. And everything around me was sharper, more in focus, brighter, clearer. I spoke to some people on the train. I laughed with them over something. I told them my husband had been in the World Trade Center but that he was alive, that he was going to meet me at my office. The relief was so enormous, it made me happy. Yes, happy. A strange word to be using that day, but that was the most accurate word.

At the 42nd Street stop, the conductor got on the intercom and said that the entire subway system was shutting down. We were instructed to leave all subway stations immediately. It was clear they thought the subway was the next target.

I climbed out of the station to see ribbons of news announcements crawling across the tops of buildings in neon colors, describing the attack we had just experienced. Televisions had begun to appear in store windows so pedestrians could hear the latest news. Clusters of people surrounded the storefronts. Other clusters surrounded cars that had stopped in the middle of the street because the news was blaring from car radios. There was no automobile traffic, only foot traffic, and even then, we were stalled. Standing in place, milling around, dazed. It was at 42nd Street that I learned that all airplanes had been grounded, no planes were allowed in the U.S., Wall Street was closed down. I started moving, heading uptown towards my office, but I stopped every now and then to see if there was any new news. Watching the president on one large-screen TV in a storefront window, I asked a guy standing next to me, Are we at war? He answered, We are today.

I kept going. I kept passing landmarks or, as I started thinking of them, good targets for terrorists. Times Square. Rockefeller Center. Everything still felt surreal in a bright, clear way.

I reached the HarperCollins building, where nobody was working and everybody was talking about what had happened. I had messages from Charlies family and my own family on my voicemail and I called people back to tell them he was alive. But I missed a message. I dont know how. But there was one more. It was one from Charlie himself and I would hear that one later on, when he got there.

It seemed like it took forever for him to arrive. I felt I couldnt be absolutely sure he was alive till I saw him, so after waiting inside for as long as I could, I went downstairs and stood outside the lobby. When he appeared, his face was red, he looked a little sick, and he was covered in sweat. But he was alive and thats what mattered. We held on to each other for awhile and he talked in snatches about watching someone die. But his story came later, and its still coming today as he occasionally recalls stuff he needed to forget.

We went up to my office and he asked me if I had gotten his message. What message? I said. So he had me listen to all my messages and this time, I heard his. When you listen to it, you can tell the exact instant the plane crashed into his building. It happened while he was saying his own name. We still have a copy of the recording. We kept it for posterity.

One of my colleagues had a television in her office, so everyone gathered there to watch the replay of the North Tower falling down. Then we all prepared to go home.

Except there was no assurance that we could get home. All the bridges had been closed, as were many streets. But we were anxious to get to Brooklyn. If there was any single place left that was safe, it seemed like home was that place.

Its been five years now, and New York City still doesnt feel safe. It still feels like a terrorist target, especially on those days when something happens. And I dont mean just the multiple bombings on international flights that Scotland Yard recently thwarted. I also mean days like last Fourth of July, when the police roped off the street we live on as well as four or five other blocks in the Park Slope area because there were a bunch of suspicious packages found near several mailboxes in the neighborhood.

Those kinds of things keep us wary. The big international things make us nervous. The smaller incidents close to home do too. But we wont leave New York City. Its our home. Our hearts live here. Its where we belong.

I know if you want something, youve got to take calculated risks, so Ive spent my life taking a few. Maybe more than a few. But I must admit, sometimes the big bad world looks a bit badder than it used to. And I worry about humanitys ability to retain its humanity.

I have long believed that people who work in fields related to children have a little more hope than people in other professions. Because we look at children and see tomorrow. Maybe those kids will grow up and can make tomorrow a good time to be alive. Maybe.

But theyre going to have a tougher job than I used to think they would. Were going to have to work harder to help them grow up to be the kind of people who can do that job.

CHARLIES SIDE OF THE WORLD TRADE CENTER STORY PART 2

On 9/11 after my building collapsed, I left Soho and walked up to the HarperCollins building in Midtown Manhattan. I wanted to see Catherine. I wanted to hold her. And then I wanted to go home.

I did see her. I did hold her. But at first it looked like going home was going to be a problem. All the bridges had been closed. Many streets were too. Catherine and I decided to walk as far downtown as we could. If necessary, we would find a place to stay for the night until the Manhattan Bridge or Brooklyn Bridge reopened.

We started the long walk home. So did thousands of others. We passed a hospital where doctors and nurses stood outside asking for blood donations. They expected huge numbers of patients to arrive any minute. Huge numbers never came. Not this time. Most of the people inside the Twin Towers either escaped with few injuries or never made it out.

We had to make detours around areas the authorities had cordoned off. Some areas, like Grand Central Station and the United Nations were heavily guarded. Sometimes various building security guards chased people away and wouldnt let them walk by their buildings. Everyone charged with guarding the safety of the city even a small portion of it was nervous that day. But other New Yorkers were eager to converse. As we made our way downtown, we exchanged stories with some of the other pedestrians. The streets were filled with people trying to get home.

And then there was the sunshine. It bathed the city in perfect weather, as if it were a glorious day. The blue sky was like a big pool inviting you to swim in it. The only thing that made the day less than beautiful were the ominous clouds of smoke following us home.

That and the smell. A slight burning smell. In the days and weeks to come, that smell would occasionally swell with something sweetish and dusty. It was the smell of decaying flesh. For awhile, certain subway stations had to be kept closed. Not because there was anything wrong with those particular stations. They were closed because of the smell. It was so strong, it overwhelmed people and made them gag; it made them sick.

But on 9/11, in the open air, the smell wasnt strong. We walked home in the sunshine. There was a strange feeling of elation upon us. All of us. There was almost a party atmosphere in the crowds of people on the street. We had survived! Something terrible had happened. Something unthinkable. Unbearable. But we had survived. Something about surviving and the adrenalin it produces does something to you. It makes you feel super alive, super aware, and, yes, even happy. And the brilliant sunshine intensified those feelings. In retrospect, it seems bizarre to have felt that way. It seems wrong. Thousands had died. How could I be happy? But I was. I was happy to be alive. Happy to be on the street. Happy to be in the sunshine. I cant deny it just because it seems inappropriate. Because in some inexplicable visceral way, it was appropriate.

As the crowds approached the Manhattan Bridge, we learned that the authorities had opened it to pedestrians. We could go home, after all. So along with thousands of other people, we crossed the bridge. On the other side were people in the streets and along the curbs, handing out bottles of water. We still had a long walk to Park Slope, but at least we were in Brooklyn.

I walked down 68 flights of stairs, and then 15 miles of city streets that day. Catherine walked about 10 miles. We were tired, but we hardly even noticed it. There was too much else to think about.

Later that evening, there was a wind blowing from the direction of Manhattan. Looking out the living room window, I saw a sheet of 8½ by 11 sheet of paper blowing around in the parking lot. Remembering the paper flying through the air right after the North Tower was hit, I couldnt resist the urge to find out if one of those sheets of paper was in our parking lot. I went outside. I picked it up. Sure enough, it was a sheet of letterhead from a company that had been in the World Trade Center. I held it in my fingers. I smelled smoke and kerosene in its fiber. I read the address. This had been on someones desk or in some photocopy room. In another life, this piece of paper represented business as usual.

A while later, I got a call from my boss at Morgan Stanley/Dean Witter, where I worked as a computer analyst. Morgan Stanley had offices on many floors in the South Tower. I was on the 68th floor. Most of our data was stored in computers in Texas. My boss, who had also been on the 68th floor, called to see if I was alive. By the next day, I was back at work, working from my home computer.

Nearly everyone who worked for Morgan Stanley/Dean Witter in the World Trade Center survived 9/11.

Within three years, they would lay off a vast number of employees who had been in the World Trade Center. I figure they were worried about liability. Thats why they got rid of those people. Besides, they no longer needed American computer analysts. Workers in India were cheaper. Why didnt they lay me off? Im not sure. They probably would have gotten around to it eventually. But why did they wait? Why did they hesitate? I was beginning to get confrontational, so maybe they were afraid I might be the one to cause them trouble. In 2003, my wifes boss died and HarperCollins kicked her out the day after his memorial service. The double blow was traumatizing for her, but it was offset a bit by a generous inheritance. Her boss left her quite a bit of money. So the result was that we didnt need either HarperCollins or Morgan Stanley. People who dont really need the companies they work for make it hard for those companies to control them.

Needless to say, both Catherine and I have grown pretty disillusioned with corporate America.

But back on 9/11, we still had a few illusions, although we no longer felt safe.

Before the attack, I used to have about a dozen small toy cows who could moo. My colleagues rightly considered me to be a bit of a nut with a weird sense of humor. My cows stood in a line along the top of one of the walls of my cubicle in the World Trade Center. People passing by on the way to their own cubicles would pass the toy cows and I would have the cows moo for them.

After 9/11, those cows became a topic of macabre humor among us. We called each other to make sure we were all alive, and without fail, at some point in the phone conversations, there were the toy cow remarks. Did your cows make it out? everyone asked. Theyre probably hamburgers now, right? said one. Maybe ground round? said another. No, ground chuck! Get it, Chuck? (A lot of my colleagues called me Chuck instead of Charlie.) By the time we had a temporary office to go to, I had replaced the toy cows with one crazy little cow who laughed maniacally and went moo, moo, MOOOOO and laughed maniacally again. I called it the mad cow. I said it was the only cow who had survived but he had gone mad.

The mad cow helped us keep a sense a humor when we didnt even have decent desks to sit at.

Much to my wifes chagrin, I kept smoking. That stale, year-old cigarette I smoked outside the World Trade Center on 9/11 had gotten me started again. For awhile, anyway. Eventually I quit once more, but for some time after 9/11, I kept smoking. My wife wouldnt let me smoke in the apartment, however. We have parrots and she was concerned about their delicate respiratory systems. Plus, she thought Id smoke less if I couldnt smoke in the house. And of course, she wanted me to quit again. The result was that, especially during that fateful September, I spent a lot of time sitting on the stoop in front of my building, smoking and talking to the neighbors coming and going from their apartments. That was the month I really got to know my neighbors. All I talked about was the World Trade Center. Everyone in my building heard my story. Essentially, my neighbors became my psychologists. They were sympathetic, interested, caring.

And they were better than the free counselors that companies all over New York City were providing for their employees. Trouble was, counselors and psychologists themselves were too traumatized to deal with other peoples traumas. Plus, there werent enough of them to go around. So companies were using people who werent experienced in the kind of help we needed. It didnt matter to me. I didnt need a counselor. I had my neighbors.

Those first days after 9/11, Catherine and I watched television incessantly. When I was inside WTC II, I didnt really know what was going on. I didnt know what was happening outside. I never had contact with the outside world until I escaped.

What I saw that day, youll never see in a Hollywood movie. I hate the recent Hollywood movies about 9/11. I havent seen them. I dont have to. I know that the stories have been sanitized. They would have to be sanitized. If they werent, people would be getting sick in theaters all over the country. I dont like that these cleaned up stories will be what is left behind, left to posterity. At least they will be augmented by the televised interviews of people who survived. I wish more people could tell their stories.

Unremembered things, of course, remain. Partly because the people who might have remembered them have died. Partly because some things are too terrible to be remembered.

I know there are things that I dont remember.

They sneak into my dreams and nightmares. They whisper in my ear when I least expect it. They come in flashes of images that I cant quite place. They are remembered and forgotten again, all within a second.

There was a moment up there in the sky, when I looked for one brief moment into a dying womans eyes and saw something I hope to never see again, even in my nightmares. There was a moment when a calm mans death made me recognize the futility of trying to plan for the future. I still plan for the future. I still deny myself certain things so that I can have the kind of future I want. But what I want and the kind of future I plan is a little different than how I used to think of those things before 9/11. Now some part of my brain maybe not always the conscious part thinks about the point. Whats the point? My life has to have a point. The point I choose is life.

That day in September changed my life forever. Some of those changes I know about. Some I dont. It put me on a different path than the one I was walking on 9/10. Hopefully, its a good path.

One day, not long ago, I submitted an essay to Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. I believe that essay offers an idea of how my life changed direction and what path Im treading these days.

Here is that essay:

MEMORIAL SLOAN-KETTERING CANCER CENTER (MSKCC) SCHOLARSHIP ESSAY: WHY I WOULD LIKE TO WORK IN ONCOLOGY NURSING AT MSKCC, BY CHARLES E. CARAHER

I used to want to make a difference. That sounds simple. It is simple. But like a lot of people, Ive just worked for the sake of survival. At least, thats what I did until 9/11. Then everything changed.

I was a computer analyst at Morgan Stanley on the 68th floor of the World Trade Center when it was attacked. I saw people die. I dont remember everything I saw that day, but what I do remember haunts me. I didnt make a difference on 9/11, but I survived. Survival, however, is not enough.

I went on working at Morgan Stanley for awhile, but I became disillusioned with the way they treated their employees. Thirty-year veterans were laid off, whole departments demolished. I began shopping for a new career.

Why did I choose nursing? Thats hard to say. It seemed like a job that would always be needed. It seemed like it could give me a good life without requiring me to hurt other people just to keep my job. On the contrary, Id be helping people. I would be in a position where I might be able to ease their pain. Maybe I could make a difference.

Why did I choose oncology? I dont know. Maybe because my sister is a breast cancer survivor. Maybe because my uncle has prostate cancer. I only know its something that draws me in on an intellectual level. I want to learn more about it.

And why do I want to work at MSKCC? Thats easy. Its the top cancer hospital in the country. Its the best. And if you want to learn about something, youre better off learning from the best. I want to work in a place that makes a difference in peoples lives. I want to help make that difference.