In November of 2001 I attended the wedding of one of my husband's colleagues. I was reluctant because I wouldn't know very many of the other guests, and because I heard that the people I did know were going to be seated at another table. As we took our seats and looked around at each other, the groom came to our table and introduced a gentleman who sat across the table. He was a thin man, dark haired, with huge dark circle beneath his eyes. He looked...beaten. Worn. He looked as if he hadn't slept in weeks. I could see that it was an effort for him to be around so many people. I'll call him, John, although that's not his real name. The groom said, "Donna, you and John should get along. You're both New Yorkers."
We began to talk about NY and as this was only 2 months after 9/11, the conversation naturally turned in that direction. Just like after Pres. Kennedy's assassination, it was common to ask where people were when they heard about the attacks. When I asked John he looked down, then up, and said, "I was in the first building that was hit." He worked in the WTC and was standing at the copy machine, getting ready to start copying notes for a meeting on the 12th (a meeting that the groom was to have attended). He said that in one second that was both incredibly long and incredibly short, the building leaned to one side and then snapped back, throwing him across the room and into a pile of fallen furniture and books. The noise, he said, was deafening. Destruction. Screams. Fire. Air rushing. Glass breaking. He could hardly breathe because the air was filled with dust and debris. He began helping his fellow office workers, digging them out of piles of rubble, bandaging injuries, finding water, comforting where he could.
Through it all, his boss was in communication with people outside the building. He didn't tell John or anyone else just how grave the situation was, just that an airplane had crashed into the building and that it was time for them to evacuate. The boss supervised as folks began heading for stairwells and exits and he encouraged them all, John included, to get down the stairs and get out of the building. He was going to go up a few floors to see if there was anyone who needed help. John argued with him for a few minutes but finally left, half-carrying a woman with terrible cuts on her legs.
It was a long trek down a stairwell that was dark and filled with choking dust and dirt. People streamed down the stairs; some were quiet, some were sobbing, others appeared calm but with an air of desperation. As they were going down they passed some of NY's finest police officers and fire fighters as they were heading up. John tried to ask them to look for his boss, but he knew even as he asked that the rescuers were looking for everyone, not just one person.
John said that as they approached the last couple of floors, the air pressure suddenly changed and the dust began moving very rapidly. There was an accompanying roar that was deafening. He says he doesn't remember much after that, just picking up his female colleague and running like hell. He barely made it out and away from the buidling as it collapsed behind him. He knew that his boss couldn't possibly be alive.
John spent that night in someone's apartment. After leaving his colleague with EMTs he began to walk, not even knowing why or where he was going. A kind stranger brought him into his apartment, gave him water and tried to convince him to go to a hospital. John was relatively uninjured, just some cuts and bruises from being thrown across the building, but his lungs were filled with dust and he was having trouble breathing. He eventually went to the hospital and spent a couple of days having his lungs treated.
When the politicians and the media moguls start to bloviate about "rights" and reconciliation and moderation, when they say there is nothing wrong with building a mosque so close to Ground Zero, when they say that America brought this on itself, I see John's face. I hear his rasping voice, damaged by all the garbage he breathed in that day. I see the dark circles, a result of not sleeping more than an hour or two at a time because he woke up in terror as he re-lived that day, night after night.
I don't know where John is now. But I will never forget him. Or that day.
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