story7227.xml

story7227.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2002-09-13

Construction workers were banging away for days on the floor above me so noise and thuds of dropped equipment were nothing new. This time they moved the whole floor on a slant as an earthquake would disembowel the contents of tidy home. Papers were flying outside the tiny windows near my cubicle like a ticker-tape parade. Yet as a tried and true in-your-face New Yorker (yes, I'm still a New Yorker although I've lived in the Garden State for six years), not even the slanted floor or flying papers concerned me. It wasn't until my normally gentle-voiced supervisor screamed, "Everybody, get out" that I thought there was a problem. I stopped to get my huge bag and tote bag because as any woman will tell you, your bag contains everything important in life. Or so I thought.

I methodically walked down seventeen floors of lightly smoke-filled stairs. I remember seeing firemen climbing in the opposite direction which gave me my first clue of what was happening - a fire. Reaching the promenade level of One World Trade Center, I wasn't prepared for the sight. Glass was everywhere. There were injured. Policeman were screaming, "Walk, don't run. Cover your heads. Don't look back!" I distinctly remember hearing thumps but I had no frame of reference for the sound. It wasn't until much later that I learned that the thumps were bodies hitting the ground. "Don't look back" was not only a safety order but a call that protected my now-fragile mental state. To this day, I feel blessed that I didn't witness the horror of seeing my fellow man - well you fill in the blanks.

Then an anonymous voice said, "A plane hit the building." I kept walking, stopping a few minutes later to what I thought was the sound of a sonic boom. A huge plane was aiming directly for Tower Two and in the minute that it would take me to turn my head, the plane struck. I witnessed a body plunging to finality. Fear finally struck and I started to run. I heard one of my co-workers screaming, "Oh my God. Oh my God!" I knew what he was witnessing and I didn't look back. My flashbacks include the plane hitting Tower Two but thankfully I wasn't witness to masses of my friends dying.

I was still running, trying to think where I should run to. Were there more kamikazes to come? My husband worked at the Verizon building on Broad Street. Where was Broad Street? I stopped a detective directing traffic to ask him in which direction I should run. He pointed me to safety's direction. "Thank you for helping us today, officer." He knew that this was more than just a casual thank you.

I somehow reached Broad Street and found my husband. Nothing has been the same since. I've lost my job of 29 years due to the terrorist cowards. I saw a therapist. Surely, I would need some kind of help after facing death. After two sessions, he sent me packing reassuring me that I would be fine. To an extent, he was right. No one ever forgets a brush with death, the loss of loved ones or a long-held job. But from that tragedy, a new life has started for me. I'm attending Brookdale Community College on a full-time basis. I always wanted to be a registered nurse. Now at 51 years of age, I'm getting the opportunity to fulfill a dream that I though had eluded me. And now I carry the smallest of bags. My family, the important treasures of my life, couldn't possibly fit in there.