story8639.xml

story8639.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2002-11-10

I had a hospital appointment. At 2pm British time I was applying mascara and trying to watch the BBC at the same time. Suddenly the programmes were interrupted for a news flash. Reports from New York that a plane has crashed into a skyscraper. How awful, I thought. Airport congestion? Bad weather? Within minutes a second plane hit. I went as goosebumpy as I am now typing this. The newscaster is going crazy. Terrorism was the only answer. The audacity and evil of these people stuns me. Suicide bombing on a colossal scale. Less than a week before myself and my friends had sat in the pub and discussed the impossibility of dealing with terrorists who relished death.
My taxi arrived, forcing me to move. I spoke to the driver who hadn't heard. He switched on the radio and every station seemed to have the same vague story.
My local hospital is a military one, the only one left in England. It has treated soldiers for over150 years and it serves the local community too. I reach the department and find doctors, nurses, admin staff and patients crowded around the tv in the waiting room. People are calling out theories, horrified. Some are panicking. I recall one elderly man proclaiming that if America is being attacked, we are next. A couple of women are weeping, something that I'm sure would normally attract scorn or amazement. There is none on show today. Military personnel are present, no doubt harbouring their own theories. The only other time in my life that I recall such a standstill is the death of Diana. But this is larger scale. The deaths are greater and the shock of us all is palpable. By now people in the World Trade Centre are hanging out of the burning buildings. They have only two choices left in the world and both will end in death. I have always believed in symmetry and natural justice but not any more. I imagine some super agency springing into action and saving those people. I can't believe that "they" would let those people die. I have to face the reality that "they" are not invincible.
It takes a little time for me to realise that my appointment has been delayed for nearly an hour.
Inside the treatment room, the consultant and I talk about the tragedy. I'm having laser treatment, which burns. For once I don't complain, grateful to be safe on the ground.
By the time I leave the hospital, there are soldiers guarding the gate. The new taxi driver tells me about the Pentagon crash. We have a conversation of if's, but's and maybe's. Like the people in the hospital, we are unanimous in who we believe may be responsible. No names but generalisations. Only time will tell.
I go straight to my parents house for tea. My brother has arrived too. We watch the live pictures on tv. News is coming in all the time. Canary Wharf, a London skyscraper, has been evacuated. Another plane is believed to be flying off course over the US. My father, a former sailor, states that there would be no choice but to shoot that plane down. My mother and me, being female, can't talk in such cold terms. Killing more innocent passengers to save people on the ground is a hard choice to make.
In Britain we've lived with terrorism for many years. Bombs in shopping malls, office blocks, banks, pubs, barracks and remembrance parades. 10, 20, 30 people killed in one go. For all what those victims have suffered, nothing comes close to what happened to the World Trade Centre.
May those poor souls rest in peace. X