nmah6386.xml

nmah6386.xml

born-digital

story

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no

2003-12-23

Spetember 11, 2001 was a glorious late summer day -- clear, dry, not too hot, with a cobalt blue sky. I was working at an outpatient clinic for substance abuse at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. I first heard about the attacks from our office manager. "A plane flew into the World Trade Center." A few minutes later she passed by my office. "A second plane just hit the other tower!" I joined other employees in the lounge. We watched with grim faces as the events of the morning continued to unfold: the plane crash into the Pentagon, the plane crash in Pennsylvania, and the falling of the towers. Many of us had loved ones at risk. The brother of a research assistant worked at the Pentagon. The son of our office manager worked near the World Trade Center. Hours passed before we heard that both were safe. Part of my job was to see substance abuse patients in the hospital, including the emergency room. When I entered the acute psychiatry ward of the ER, the medical director turned to me and said: "This is insane!" The number of visits to his ward would skyrocket over the next two weeks, as would the number of substance abuse patients seeking help. Case management services in the hospital that morning were on high overdrive as MGH hastily transferred patients to other hospitals in anticipation of overflow from New York trauma centers, a need that tragically was never needed because of the enormous number of fatalities. When I visited the trauma floors, I saw a lot of unknown faces in the nursing staff. Within an hour after the planes struck the WTC, an emergency trauma team was on its way to New York from MGH. Replacement nurses were called in. I tried to refer a substance abuse patient to a rehabilitation hospital substance abuse unit, but they were full. They had converted their bed capacity into regular rehabilitation services and taken patients from MGH and other hospitals. Too many of us at MGH lost loved ones that day. One of our physicians, a Muslim from the Middle East, lost a dear friend and colleague, a Muslim woman and her husband who were aboard Flight 11: she was eight months pregnant. A friend of mine from college, Stephen Adams, worked at the restaurant at the top of the WTC and he was lost that day. We had graduated from Marlboro College, a tiny liberal arts college in Vermont, and had 27 people in our graduating class. It was amazing to me that even our small class was touched with tragedy that day. One of my most vivid memories of that day was when Air Force jets flew over Boston in the afternoon. After so many hours of nothing in the sky, all of us on the street literally stopped in our tracks and stared upward to see what kind of planes were in the air. None of us moved until we realized they were military jets. In the days following September 11, it was strange to see the sky free of planes. I hadn't seen such a thing since I was a child in the late 1950's.

I think I will always be changed by the enormity of the tragedy, just as if it had been a natural disaster rather than a manmade one. I have greater compassion and value the irreplaceable aspects of life more -- the people I love, the fragility of life. My lifestyle has not changed that much, although I am greatly concerned with the threat to civil liberties that has arisen in response to September 11.

The diversity of persons who died must be remembered as it is a reflection of who we are as a nation, one people united by the desire to live a better life in this country, no matter where we came from. The strength of our compassion, as shown in the immediate response of endless nurses, EMT's, firemen, police, doctors, and other providers must be remembered. We needed no authority to guide us that day. We may be a nation of individuals, but we are a nation and unity is our invisible bond.

I did not fly an American flag after September 11 and my feelings about the flag have not changed. The flag is a symbol of our nation. What I saw on September 11 was the real thing, a nation in action, a community of independence and loving interdependence. Eventually, this day will become that kind of a symbol for me, transforming a day of tragedy into a day of loving interdependence.