Those who follow this blog and my other posts on the numerous
writer’s sites that I belong to, know that I am on vacation. So, instead of
boring you with details of the fried Grouper sandwich I had for lunch and the
long, saltwater swim I took after (waiting thirty minutes of course) I’m going to post a
long sample of my current best selling book, DROP OUT. I’ve received more than
a hundred emails from people telling me how much the book affected them and
their views on the meaning of life. So, without taking up any more of your time
with introductions, I give you DROP OUT.
Chapter 1
September 11th 2001
8:46 a.m.
An explosion of sound blasted through the building.
It lurched violently to one side. Two people in the express elevator with me
gripped the handrail as we continued our ascent. One was a twenty-something
woman wearing tan pants, a white blouse, and an embroidered red scarf. I’d seen
her many times having lunch at The Odeon on West Broadway where I
worked. The other, a man, was tall and broad-shouldered. He looked about sixty,
handsome, with a shock of white hair. I had never seen him before but by the
looks of his tailored suit I assumed he was someone of importance.
“What the Hell just happened?” the man questioned.
“I don’t know!” I replied.
“Was it a bomb?” the woman asked, her voice high
with fear.
A second explosion rocked the elevator followed by
severe, earthquake-like shaking. The woman screamed. The elevator shuddered and
jolted to a stop. We crouched low and braced against the floor. A cloud of
smoke engulfed us.
“We’ve gotta get out of here!” the woman cried and
coughed.
She fumbled with her purse and retrieved her cell
phone. Instinct told me to act. I hopped to my feet and looked around in
exasperation.
“I can’t get a signal!” the woman stated. “There’s
no phone signal!”
“C’mon!” I hollered to the businessman, coughed, and
wedged my fingertips in the thin space between the elevator doors. “Help me
open these!”
The businessman stood and grabbed at the other side.
We pulled; heaved; coughed. My muscles swelled. Slowly, the doors pried apart
to face a wall of sheetrock stamped with the identification: 102nd
floor.
“Oh God!” the young woman sobbed, and started
coughing. “It’s blocked!”
I looked down the shaft. Several floors below was
all fire.
Panic hit. I kicked at the sheetrock; slammed the
heel of my foot with all my might. Over and over. It didn’t make a dent.
“We’re never gonna bust through this!” I stated.
Ideas jumped into my brain. “We’re gonna have to dig out!” I turned to the
businessman. “You got anything sharp?”
“Dig out!” the young woman cried. “We can’t
possibly!”
I coughed. The businessman’s eyes were huge O’s of
fear.
“All I have is my car keys,” he said.
“Give them to me!”
Smoke thickened. The young woman tried to use her
cell phone again. A series of coughs overtook her.
“Get some cloth!” I stated, and pulled off my white
Perry Ellis button down shirt. “Spit into the fabric and then wrap it around
your mouth. It’ll help you breath!”
The businessman removed his shirt. The young woman
used her scarf.
Driven by panic, I gouged the keys into the
sheetrock. My hands moved fast but made little progress. The businessman climbed
up on the handrail and tried to push out the ceiling. He hammered with his
palms to no avail. The panels were made of steel and screwed in tight.
Heat intensified. Smoke stung my eyes and scratched
my throat, smothering my ability to think clearly. Sweat ran down my forehead
and soaked my T-shirt. I puffed and wheezed, poking and jabbing with the keys
until my arms and shoulders ached. Pieces of sheetrock chipped off. Two of the
keys bent. My fingers cramped. Breathing came in lung-pinching, hot gasps. My
eyes went unfocused. Faintness swept over; light headed and winded.
I thought about dropping the keys, closing my eyes,
and giving up.
Suddenly, the key poked through to the other side.
The hole was no larger than what a worm bores, but it was enough. Fresh air
drooled in.
“I’ve done it!” I stated.
I put my lips to the hole and breathed oxygen that
was free of ash and smoke, but tasted of fuel. We took turns gulping fast
breaths. Then I quickly sawed and made the opening about the diameter of a
quarter.
Infused with energy, the businessman and I started
kicking at the hole, kicking for our lives. Chunks of sheetrock broke off. And
then bigger chunks. Finally, his foot punched out a huge, chair-size opening. A
drafty inrush propelled the smoke in the elevator to the ceiling.
“We’re free!” the young woman gushed, nearly
overcome with emotion.
“Go clear the way ahead!” I said to the businessman.
“I’ll kick the hole big enough for me.”
He nodded, squat down, and wiggled through the
space, then knocked out a thin sheet of drywall on the other side and
disappeared. The young woman crawled out next. I kicked at the sheetrock until
I could fit my large frame and then squeezed through both holes, emerging
through the wall and into a deserted conference area. Except for the lack of
activity and the strong odors of combustion and gasoline, everything appeared
strangely ordinary: desks, computers, cluttered stacks of paper, a copy machine
in the corner.
The young woman’s hands trembled as she attempted to
dial her cell phone again.
I stepped toward the window.
Below us, flames rolled upward in massive orange
turrets as thick, black smoke gushed into the sky. My eye caught a flaming
object free-falling to the ground. And then another flaming object jumped from
a broken window. And then another. My mind reeled with horror as I realized
they were people leaping from the building.
I whipped out my cell phone and tried for a signal.
Amazingly, one bar came up.
“We’ve got phones!” I announced.
Shaking and reeling, I pressed Amber’s number. She
answered on the second ring.
“Amber!” I said. “Are you alright? Are you okay?”
“I’m fine!” she replied, her voice cracking as it
often did when she was nervous. “We’re all fine! Where are you? I was so
worried about you!”
“I’m on the 102nd floor.” I swallowed
hard, trying to keep the adrenaline staccato and tension from my voice.
“What are you doing there?”
“It’s a long story. I stopped on ninety-seven to
surprise Rick at Cantor Fitgerald. But he’s late, so I—”
“Someone said the lower floors are on fire!” She cut
me off. “Did you feel the building shake? What happened? All I can see out the
windows is smoke.”
My mind battled to recapture its sanity and jerk my
senses back to some semblance of normalcy.
“I don’t know,” I replied. “Maybe a gas explosion.
Maybe a bomb.”
“Oh, dear God!”
“I’m certain the fire and police departments are on
their way,” I assured her. “They’ll have the situation under control soon
enough. What’s important is that we’re all safe. How are you feeling? How’s the
baby?”
“I’m okay. The baby’s kicking a bit, but I’m good.
No nausea so far.”
“How about everyone else?”
“They’re fine. We’re all fine up here.”
“I’m heading to the stairs now,” I said. “I’ll see
you in a few.”
“No, don’t come up! Someone said Emergency Services
wants everyone to stay where they are. They don’t want people clogging the
stairwells in a panic. The safest thing for us to do is to wait for the fire
department to get here.”
“I don’t care what Emergency Services said!”
“Nathan, no! You’ll only worry me. Stay where you
are until the building is safe. Please! I’ll see you at home when this is over.
Don’t worry, it’s totally normal up here. I’ll be fine.”
I gripped my phone, frazzled with indecision.
“Guess I should have picked a different place for
breakfast?” I said, trying to lighten the situation. “I’m sorry. This was
supposed to be such a special day.”
“Like any of this is your fault,” she replied,
trying her best to sound uplifted. “We’ll celebrate next week. Someplace street
level. We… then— ”
The signal cut.
“Amber! Amber!”
I looked over at the young woman. She was putting
down her cell phone.
“My mom told me the city is sending every fire
precinct in Manhattan over here,” the young woman said, her voice shaking. “My
mom said I should stay put until they get the situation under control. That the
whole middle of the building is on fire.”
We all looked at each other. Stony silence ensued.
“I think we should get out of here,” I said, after a
few moments.
“I think we should stay,” the businessman countered.
His face was still pale but he looked immensely relieved to be out of the
elevator. He wiped sweat from his forehead and smoothed his hair. “It’s what
they want us to do. It’s safer.”
“I don’t feel safer,” I said. “The fire’s only a few
floors below. Fire burns up. If they can’t get this out quickly it’s going to
burn its way here.”
“I doubt that,” he replied. “The building has fire
retardant systems. Sprinklers and such. For all we know the fire may be out.”
He crossed his arms. “I’m staying.”
“We don’t know what’s going on down there!” I
stated. “The systems may be knocked out! It could be total chaos!”
The young woman shifted uneasily.
“I’m staying!” the businessman affirmed. “You can do
whatever you want.”
“I… I agree,” the young woman said, her mind in an
obvious state of uncertainty. “I… I think we should stay.”
I looked at them both and thought perhaps that I was
the one making a mistake. Surely, the building was equipped to contain this
type of emergency. Surely, the New York Fire Department, the best in the world,
could quickly remedy this situation. We were out of the elevator and safe. Why
put myself in more danger by trying to evacuate? But something deep inside me
said to get Amber and our families and get out. This was no ordinary accident.
I sensed something extraordinarily horrible had happened.
“I’m leaving!” I affirmed, and started toward the
emergency stairwell. “I’m not going to sit around here and hope to be rescued.”
“Wait!” the young woman called, her voice quavering.
She looked about in alarm and then nervously licked her lips. “I… I changed my
mind. I’m coming with you. I don’t want to stay here! I want to get out of this
building!”
I nodded, and turned to the businessman. “How about
it?”
“I’ll take my chances,” the businessman concluded.
The businessman sat down in a leather executive
chair, leaned back, and rested his hands across his lap as if none of this was
really happening.
“Okay then,” I replied. “Take care of yourself.”
“You too.” He paused, and looked at me in an
ethereal, brotherly way. “Thanks for that quick thinking back there. You really
came through.”
I nodded, and forced a thin smile, then turned to
the young woman. “Ready?”
We headed past a maze of identical cubicles toward
the emergency stairwell located in the core of the building. I pushed open the
thick steel door and held it for the young woman. Phosphorescent lights glowed
feebly in the tunnel-like stairwell. The door closed with the solid, echoing
click of engaging metal.
“I’ll see you on the street,” I said, and turned to
head up the steps.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“To get my fiancé.”
“You’re leaving me?”
“I have to!”
A small pod of people looking annoyed came trudging
down the upper flights and passed us on the landing.
“Don’t bother heading to the roof if that’s what
you’re thinking?” said an older, overweight woman wearing a blue dress. “A
piece of concrete fell from the ceiling on 105 and is blocking the stairwell.
There’s no way around it. Guess we’ll be getting our exercise today.”
My heart sank as the group continued their descent.
“Come on,” the young woman urged, and pulled at my
shirt sleeve. “You heard her! You can’t go up!”
I thought about Amber trapped, and hoped and prayed
that she’d be okay (in the back of my mind I knew she would) and then
reluctantly turned around and started down the stairs.
A floor lower, we encountered more people, a few
dozen, walking, not hurrying. Some were even joking about the situation. Others
were noticeably angry about the hassles of the lost workday.
As we descended another floor even more people
poured into the stairwell. It got crowded. Heads and shoulders stirred and
jostled for space; a rustling tide toward the freedom of the first floor.
Temperature and the biting odor of gasoline increased.
The line nearly stopped because someone ahead needed
assistance, but the atmosphere remained relatively calm and orderly. The young
woman turned to me. She gathered herself, making a visible effort to keep her
emotions under control. I met her anxious gaze with a reassuring grin.
“I’m sorry I freaked out back there in the
elevator,” she said, and cleared her throat. “I was just so scared.”
“We all were,” I replied. “But we’re safe now.”
I pressed my hand against her stiff shoulder in
understanding. Her shoulder loosened a little.
“In an hour we’ll be on the street getting a cup of
coffee and waiting for the all clear,” I added.
“I hope so.” She smiled fleetingly. “By the way, my
name’s Lea. Lea Kramer.”
“Nathan Cruz,” I said. “I’ve seen you at The Odeon
on West Broadway. I work there.”
“That’s where I recognize you,” she said. “I thought
I knew you from somewhere.”
“Today’s my day off. I was supposed to meet my
family and my fiancé’s family for breakfast to celebrate our recent engage—”
A huge explosion shook the stairwell. Steel
shrieked, concrete cracked and shattered. Dust and smoke encased us. Emergency
lights shut off pitching the stairwell into total darkness. People screamed in
horror.
The crowd broke into a panic and started to run,
stampeding down and over each other. Lea grabbed hold of my arm as we held our
positions with our backs pressed against the wall until the crush of people
passed and the chaos subsided.
A few moments later, the emergency lights flicked
back on. A flight below, I saw an older man sprawled on the stairwell in
obvious distress. I raced down three steps at a time to reach him. Lea
followed.
“Are you okay?” I asked the man.
“I… I… can’t… can’t breathe.” His eyes bulged from a
face the color of ripe apples. “I… I… can’t…”
He gasped fervently.
“Lay back!” I said, feeling a helpless panic. “Help
is coming! It won’t be…”
The man lost consciousness.
The building trembled and groaned. A large piece of
the stairwell came crashing down and smashed against the flight above us scattering
large chunks. Sprinklers came on and rained lukewarm water.
“Let’s go!” Lea said, and her voice pitched with
fear. “It’s not safe here!”
“You go,” I replied. “I’m gonna get this guy out of
the stairwell and into an office.”
“That’s very brave,” she said. She looked down the
stairs and her hand trembled as she wiped water droplets from her forehead.
“I’ll help. But let’s do it quick.”
We both reached down, me at his head and she at his
feet, and tried to lift him. It was like trying to lift a two hundred pound
sack of sand. We strained against his wet, limp weight and barely got him off
the floor when we had to put him down again.
Another chunk of the ceiling fell. Lights fluttered.
Jets of steam whistled from burst pipes above us.
“Hurry!” Lea cried, and struggled again to lift the
man’s legs. “It sounds like this whole building is going to collapse!”
I laid two fingers against the artery in the man’s
neck.
“I don’t feel a pulse!” I said, and put my hand over
his mouth. “He’s not breathing!”
Lea drew back and her hand went up to cover her
lips.
“He’s dead?” she gasped through her fingers.
I nodded mutely.
“Oh God!” Her eyes filled with tears. “Oh God! Oh
God! Oh God!”
She made the sign of a cross over her chest.
“We’ll tell emergency services he’s here,” I said.
“Let’s go!”
A flight down, we passed two more people sprawled on
a landing, dead, battered, and bloody, as if crushed by a giant fist. Revulsion
rolled and knotted my stomach.
“Look how messed up they are,” Lea said, her eyes
wide with horror. “What could have happened to them?”
“Maybe the ceiling fell. The residents of these
floors must have put them out there for the firemen to find.”
“How awful!”
A long, deep thundering sound shuddered the
building. Fluorescents fell from the ceiling and shattered. Lea screamed.
Sections of the above stairwell broke away and crashed onto the landing behind
us.
Every fiber in me flashed into action. I grabbed
Lea’s arm and took off down the steps as fast as I could, hopping over chunks
of debris and passing more dead. Most looked in their twenties and thirties,
badly charred or busted up, business suits and blouses torn and frayed.
An older, badly burned, heavy-set woman wearing the
tattered remnants of a blue office dress, and in obvious shock, came barreling
up the steps with her arms open wide, putting herself directly into our way so
we couldn’t pass her.
“Go back!” she screamed and sobbed, puffing with
exertion. She gesticulated madly. “You gotta go back! The floor below is all
fire! Everyone’s dead! Every single one!”
The expression on her face looked absolutely
horror-stricken. Her eyes, all black pupil, were wild and nearly jittering in
their sockets.
“You’re injured!” I said. “We’ll help you. But we
must go down!”
“Noooo!” Her scream projected into an anguished
wail. “They’re all dead!”
Lea flashed me a look of desperation. A look that
said we have to get out of here immediately. I moved to detour around the
woman.
Another explosion shook the building and the
stairwell groaned an unnatural, unearthly sound. Cracks slithered along the
walls. Suddenly, fire blew through the floor below and a tremendous cloud of
thick, black smoke whirled up. The hefty woman scuttled up the steps away from
the pandemonium. The wall splintered and a large piece fell down. Sheets of
drywall crumbled in a blaze of sparks. Pipes burst.
I found Lea’s hand, whisked her along with me up to
the next landing, and barreled through the reinforced door onto the 94th floor.
Heat slammed into us. I stood a moment fixated in shock and horror. Hot, gluey
air burned my eyes and lungs. The entire floor was nearly gutted. Large pieces
of blazing airplane wreckage littered the buckled interior. Concrete support
columns were crumbled and broken. Steel beams were blistered and blackened. Light
fixtures, speakers, and wire dangled from the fractured ceiling. Half the area
was consumed by raging fire that careened out a massive hole in the side of the
building causing a strong wind to blow and draw out the worst of the smoke.
Bodies lay sprawled on the floor and against the
walls; severed heads, limbs, and torsos tossed over broken office furniture and
chunks of construction material. Chopped up. Knocked out. Thrashing. Burned
beyond recognition. Smoldering. Those few still alive cowered in the fire-free
sections, screaming hysterically and crying, or crumpled on the floor in pain.
Some sat trembling, in all-consuming shock, oblivious to their injuries and the
devastation surrounding them.
“God help us,” Lea muttered, and coughed.
A young man whose abdomen was crushed under what
looked like a piece of airplane fuselage was flailing his arms wildly and
calling desperately for his mother. A woman burned over most of her body sat
with her hands around her knees sobbing into raw fingers. A few yards away, I
recognized a man who frequented the gym where I exercised. His name was Larry.
He lay twisted on his back, legs awkwardly akimbo, motionless, and moaning.
A hand whacked my shoulder from behind. I spun
around and faced a nude woman, hairless and burned over most of her body. My
stomach nearly revolted.
“Billy?” she asked, her expression completely lost.
“Billy, that you?” Her eyes shifted to a dead man sprawled a few feet away. She
wobbled toward the body. “Billy…”
I stood immobile, slack-jawed and stunned, breathing
the fiery air in shallow gasps to maintain my sanity.
“Let’s go!” Lea urged. “There’s no helping these
people! We’ve gotta get out of here!”
I took off my shirt again, wrapped the sleeve around
my mouth, and leaned beside Larry.
“Larry!” I said. “It’s Nathan Cruz!”
He squirmed at the sound of my voice and moved his
arms feebly, his expression the embodiment of angst.
“Hurry, Nathan!” Lea cried. “The fire’s spreading!”
“Okay, Larry,” I said. “I’m going to lift you.
Everything’s going to be okay.”
I reached down and noticed high heat radiating off
the floor.
“Do you feel that?” I asked Lea. “There must be fire
beneath us.”
Lea’s pupils contracted with fear.
The building vibrated with a loud creaking,
crunching sound. It rippled and roiled as if built on a foundation of gelatin.
Lea flashed me a look of utter and absolute terror. And then everything seemed
to happen in slow motion.
A tremendous roar-rumble and the floor crumbled and
sunk away beneath us. Everything blurred into smoke, fire, dust, and the
crackle of electrical sparks. I was in the air, weightless and free falling,
sailing through empty space; tumbling.
I landed hard. My breath knocked from my lungs.
Reality winked out.
Chapter 2
I smelled smoke.
I opened my eyes, vision speckled with soot and
particles, and blinked. I was on my back on top of a crumbled desk. My belly
was on fire. I quickly smacked out the flame.
Wracked with hurt and nearly delirious, I rolled
over and lurched to my feet. Blood and sweat poured from my face. My head
pounded. A terrible pain throbbed in my side. I tried desperately to form
coherent thoughts.
“Lea!” I groaned, struggling to find breath. “Lea!”
Fire raged around me. Airborne sediment and grit
stung my eyes and singed my nostrils. I looked up through clouds of
corkscrewing smoke at the exposed and blackened structural steel beams and
burnt concrete underside of a massive hole in the 94th floor, three
stories up. I’d fallen thirty feet and survived.
My scalp and the back of my neck ached. I touched my
bloodied side with trembling fingers. Bleary-eyed, I swayed with dizziness. The
fog of pain nearly took my senses.
“Lea!”
I steadied myself and surveyed the collapsed ruins.
Bodies and body parts littered the area, torn apart and crushed by large chunks
of concrete and debris.
“Lea!”
And then I saw her and the vision went through my
body like an electric current, freezing me in place as if my shoes had melted
to the floor. My breath quickened. My stomach looped. Lea lay in an obscene
mixture of congealed blood and ash with her head twisted unnaturally to one
side. Most of her was crushed under the weight of a concrete block about the
size of a dishwasher.
My knees folded and I sank to the floor beside her.
For a moment, I was paralyzed. All around me was
complete and utter devastation and yet I just squatted there, unable to move,
unable to pull my gaze from Lea’s empty, expressionless face; her blank, open
eyes.
Grief plowed through me. I had failed to protect
her. I had done the wrong thing in staying too long to help others. We should
have left the injured in the stairwell and gotten out quicker. My good
intentions had killed Lea!
I forced myself to take deep, even breaths to keep
from going into meltdown. Insanity merged with reality. I felt like I had
ingested a hallucinogenic substance and this was all an illusion concocted by
my twisted imagination.
A large, steel girder fell with a thunderous crash
and jarred me from my stupor. I suppressed my breakdown and gathered my wits.
“I’m so sorry, Lea,” I said, and wiped soot from her
forehead.
Galvanized into action, I continued through the
pandemonium and went to as many casualties as I could, checking for life. My
movements were fluid, my arms automatic, my brain a whirlwind. Not one person
in my vicinity had survived the fall. I was in a world in which I was the only
living thing.
Crunching over broken glass and smashed plaster, I
bore toward the stairwell clutching my injured side. Blood seeped through my
shirt and ran hot between my fingers. My back pulsed with hurt.
The door was bent and jammed in its frame. I
panicked, pushed, and hammered at the steel. Finally, it snapped open and I
stumbled back into the stairwell. Emergency lights were on and the air was cool
and still. The atmosphere was calm.
I was below the fire.
My footsteps echoed in the empty stairwell as I made
my way down to the floors completely unaffected by the catastrophe and only
faintly perfumed with smoke. Thirty flights later and who knows how long, I
came upon people. Small pockets at first, but as I continued down it got quite
crowded. I kept my line of sight straight ahead and didn’t speak to anyone.
These folks had not witnessed the atrocities that I had and most were
completely calm and oblivious to the devastation. Some were even fooling around
and making little jokes, blissfully unaware of the horrors above. A few wept
softly, but no one was shoving or seemed in a panic.
No one asked about my injuries or where I’d come
from and I was glad. My thoughts were spinning so wildly I probably wouldn’t
have been able to give a coherent answer anyway. I couldn’t quite comprehend it
myself. Unimaginable destruction and hundreds, if not thousands, dead. Right
above us. My only previous experience with death was going to see my Aunt
Trina’s open casket funeral when I was seventeen. She had passed at the ripe
old age of eighty-four.
“This fire is nothing,” I heard someone ahead of me
say. “Back in ‘93 when the bombs went off, this place was pitch black and full
of smoke. We couldn’t breathe or see ahead of us. That was bad.”
“I remember,” another person replied.
I continued with the flow, walking in a daze, my
mind unable to wipe clear Lea’s demise, unable to stop the worry over Amber,
unable to feel or evaluate how injured I was.
The stairs became even more crowded as I got lower.
At each floor, emergency crews passed out soda and bottled water that they’d
probably gotten from the vending machines. I took a bottle and doused my head,
watched the water run red down my scorched shirt. Handicapped people,
asthmatics, and the injured passed on the left. Two husky interns carrying a
disabled man in an evacuation chair asked for everyone to step aside a moment
and let them by. I took the opportunity to try and call Amber, but there was no
cell signal.
“Stay to the right!” a man shouted. “Firefighters
are coming up!”
Four firemen passed. Their faces were grim, sweaty,
and serious, dripping with exertion. They were absolutely exhausted and
breathless, fully loaded, slinging gear and water hoses. They pushed upward
slowly, one step at a time, jaws clenched.
I made eye contact with one of them.
“What floor you going up to?” I asked.
“97th,” he panted.
My heart sank as I thought of Amber sitting way up
there on the 108th. More firefighters passed, stepping heavily with
the weight of their equipment.
I stopped a moment to assist an elderly man who was
having problems getting down, but after a few flights we met up with a fireman
who told me to keep going and that he would help the man.
I passed another group of people surrounding a
middle age man in a wheelchair. A bunch of us took turns carefully wheeling him
down the steps until Emergency Services personnel took over.
A few floors down, sewer pipes had burst and the
stairs turned into mini waterfalls that smelled of rotten eggs. My cell phone
vibrated with a text message from Amber. There was a signal.
There’s about 60 of us holed up in
the kitchen. They’ve closed the doors and are trying to keep out the smoke.
I pressed her number.
“Oh, Nathan!” she answered. There was no nervous
crack in her voice, only inflections of sheer fear. “It’s a mess up here!”
I heard her sister, Sasha shout in the background.
Panicky shrieks erupted, and then coughing. Amber sobbed over them.
“Amber, listen to me!” I said. My throat muscles
strained to keep my voice even. “Lie down on the floor. Have everyone wet
towels and wedge them in the spaces under the doorways.”
“We’ve already done that!” Her voice was as scared
as I’d ever heard it. She coughed heavily. “There’s a lot of smoke! I can
hardly breathe!”
“Help is coming!” I said. “I’ve passed them on the
stairs! Help is coming!”
She coughed in raspy, lung-shredding gasps.
“Aunt Jen and Aunt Nancy are unconscious!” she
sobbed.
“Help is coming!” I assured her. “It’s coming!”
“I love you so much!” she sobbed, and coughed.
My body filled with prickling cold and I broke into
an uncontrollable shiver.
“Amber, listen to me!” I said firmly. “Hang in
there! Help is almost there!”
She coughed thunderously and then weakened, and then
her voice made a strangling noise that I’d never heard before and the line went
silent.
“Amber!” I screamed, and people around me turned
their heads.
An iron fist closed over my heart. My muscles felt
like snapping rubber bands. I turned in a white-hot rage to charge up through
the crowd. A husky fireman blocked my path.
“Continue down the stairwell!” the fireman ordered.
“I have to go up!” I shouted. “I have to go up!”
He shook his head. “Continue down! The stairs above
must remain clear for emergency service personal.”
“You don’t understand!” My eyes bore down on him in
full challenge. “I’ve gotta go up!”
“You’re injured! Continue down!”
The overflow of despair and futility was too much. I
started to hyperventilate. Masses of people milled around me and continued
their exodus.
“Continue down!” the fireman repeated, his voice
firm and commanding. “You’re blocking the stairwell!”
My temples pounded. I was numb. My every thought was
on Amber and our families’ safety.
She’s alive! They’re all alive! I’m certain she’s
alive! I’m certain they’re all alive!
I fought to collect myself. Fleeting tidings of hope
and wishful speculations were all that kept me from going into complete
breakdown. I did as the fireman said and continued down in a complete state of
unreality, barely feeling my legs as we inched along the steps. I felt
detached, floaty, swimming with the downstream motion of the crowd.
People started to chat and gather their composures
as we passed the 10th floor, and then the 9th, all the
way down without a problem. We exited the passageway in an orderly fashion and
emerged onto the mezzanine that overhung the first floor lobby. It was strewn
with dust and debris. Eerie silence filled the area except for strange,
successive thump sounds coming from the roof.
Firemen led us to another set of stairs and then
down into the basement, which was a labyrinth of broken concrete and debris.
Half a foot of lukewarm water engulfed the floor. Darkness was total.
“Stay close to the wall,” someone said from a
distance, and snapped a flashlight into illuminated brilliance.
A police officer guided us to a staircase.
We walked up the steps and back to the first floor
where uniformed officers had cordoned the area. They escorted us out a broken
window into the square between the two buildings. Nothing could have prepared
me for the sight of the devastation.
Burning trees, huge pieces of flaming steel
wreckage, aircraft parts, smashed office furniture, paper, dust, and smoke. The
large ball sculpture was dented and the fountain was full of metal, concrete,
and bodies. Hundreds of bodies strewn across the decimation lay twisted,
broken, scorched, and in pieces. Others were crushed and flattened from jumping
out of the high windows.
Police cars, ambulances, and fire trucks clogged the
streets. Collections of people, mostly uninjured survivors from the lower
floors, stood slack-jawed staring up. I followed their eyes and felt my own jaw
drop. Massive flames shot from two huge, crater-size holes, one in each
building. Thick, black smoke billowed into the sky.
The antenna of World Trade Center 2 and the rest of
the roof suddenly leaned to one side. Ten of thousands of onlookers all
screamed at once.
A horrible, indescribable thunder and terrifying
shriek of tearing steel ripped through the air as the entire building collapsed
in on itself and slipped away from the New York skyline into a massive cloud of
dust. Panic ensued. People started to run. The faster runners knocked down the
slower ones. I couldn’t keep up and was among those knocked to the ground. My
palms and knees scraped the sidewalk but no pain registered. I turned my head
and saw the entire building coming down on top of me.
I scrambled into a clumsy, jerky run when an immense
shockwave of sound and blast of wind lifted and threw me behind a large
reinforced concrete slab leaning against another massive reinforced concrete
slab. Turrets of intense, sooty air whipped over me, bringing sharp, whistling
shards. Chunks of debris piled in front of the makeshift shelter and just like
that I was sealed in pitch darkness. For what seemed an eternity, litter
continued to crash around me like exploding artillery shells.
Then everything went silent. A crypt-like,
cataleptic silence that overspread the world. Time felt gelled. My ears
strained for sound; the only dissonance the thumping of my own heartbeat.
Shock cancelled all feeling but I knew I was gravely
injured. I struggled to my feet, picked away and pushed aside the wreckage
strewn in front of my shelter, and emerged, dazed. The sky was choked with
thick, black ash that blotted out the sun, turning what should have been
morning into night.
“Hello!” I called, and coughed, tasting the tang of
my own blood on my blistered lips. “Anyone?”
No answer.
No sign of another living soul.
Was I the only person that survived this?
I stood a moment, my face hot and throbbing. What
remained of my clothing was soaked in sweat and blood. I scratched my forehead
and felt greasy slivers of flesh roll up underneath my fingernails. I wiggled
the fingers of my right hand. They felt slimy with melted skin.
I staggered along yards of shattered pavement amidst
a maze of debris. The ground was inches thick in ash, paper, and pulverized
concrete. Dust covered everything and swirled through the air.
Finally, I came to an area that was nearly clear and
was able to walk somewhat normally. The dust started to settle and I could see
some distance ahead and make out high peaks of twisted steel and smoldering
junk.
I tracked through the wreckage and came upon a
huddled group of about a dozen survivors. They looked shocked and ragged,
hunkered under a massive steel slab. Ash covered their bodies. Many were badly
hurt and bleeding, their faces drawn and expressionless, the redness of their
blood standing out in stark contrast to the white-gray of everything.
“Follow me!” I said.
“Why?” asked a man whose forehead was masked with
ash and blood. His eyes were wide with shock. “Where will we go?”
“Where it’s safe,” I replied authoritatively.
Two people stepped forward; their movements raised
mini clouds of dust. A few more hesitated, and then gravitated toward me. And
then the rest stepped from under the security of the concrete slab and into the
open, including the man with the head wound.
I led the way.
We clambered and crawled over mountains of sharp
edges and hot spots. I helped those weaker than I and made sure they got
through the difficult and dangerous terrain. I even carried an old woman on my
back at one particularly steep pile.
Bruised, bloodied, and covered from head to toe in
dust and grime, I finally scaled the last broken pillar and ushered the group
onto the street into an eerie and nightmarish world.
Streams of people were walking around in a daze,
covered in dust, in total shock, clutching backpacks and briefcases. My eye
caught a man trying to light a cigarette but his hands shook so badly he
couldn’t line the tip with the flame.
I looked up at the World Trade Center complex. What
I saw was almost unimaginable. Building #1 was completely gone from the world.
Flames shot out a massive, gaping hole in the middle of Building #2. My sight
captured tiny dots, people, leaping from the high floors above the fire line. I
realized with horror that the thumps I’d heard earlier in the mezzanine were
jumpers hitting the roof.
Think about something else!
“Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!” people in my
group gushed as they began to disburse. “You saved our lives!”
They scattered in different directions. I stood
staring up at the remaining burning tower, feeling empty inside, wanting to
believe that Amber had somehow escaped the building before the collapse. That
she was still alive.
“Come on, buddy,” someone said. “They’re evacuating
the area.”
I turned and lumbered down the avenue. Cuts,
scratches, blisters, and splinters, covered almost every inch of my flesh. My
face felt like it had been through a sausage grinder.
I joined a barrage of foot traffic plodding north up
West Street, threading my way through the crowd and vehicles. A woman with a
nasty wound along her cheek and another woman with a bloody hand were walking
toward Battery Park keeping each other steady. Another man was carrying the
body of an unconscious baby girl. Another woman had her right arm in a makeshift
sling. Hundreds more had injuries.
I kept hiking north and came upon a portly lady in
her late 70’s limping badly and huffing in great gasps. I started to feel
weird, feverish and dizzy, as if standing on a spinning merry-go-round.
Hallucinatory colored lights sparkled and swirled across my field of vision.
“Hey!” a voice called. “Do you need assistance?”
I turned my head. My legs became rubber and dropped
me to the pavement. Consciousness floated away.
After a brief, blank moment, I opened my eyes, half
aware of being lifted onto a stretcher and then sliding into the back of an
ambulance. The portly woman was already inside. Two EMS workers who were
covered in dust were checking my wounds.
“It’ll be okay, buddy,” one assured me. “We’re
taking you St. Vincent’s hospital.”
He placed an oxygen mask over my face and pricked an
IV into my arm. I heard the engine start and felt the vehicle pull forward.
Suddenly, the ground shook and a tremendous
roar-rumble tore apart the air.
“Holy God!” the driver shouted.
The ambulance’s tires squealed and bumped over a rut
in the road as we accelerated down the street with sirens blaring.
“Go faster!” the other EMS worker yelled. “Faster!”
I rose up on my elbows and looked out the back
window. A tremendous, mountainous cloud of debris was rolling toward us eating
everything ahead of it. People were trying to outrun it and getting swallowed
by the dust.
“Stan, go faster!” the EMS worker yelled again.
“Jesus, the second tower just fell!”
Chapter 3
The following weeks were a blind succession of
doctors, counselors, friends, bandage changes, excruciating physical therapy,
mental therapy, burn creams, topical antibiotics, and agonizing skin graft
surgeries. My emotions rode a roller coaster of anguish, grief, and disbelief,
and then all caved in at once; floating in a weird nightmarish bubble full of
unresolved feelings and unsaid goodbyes.
The deaths of my loved ones had been so abrupt, so
completely sudden, I found it impossible to come to terms with the solid
reality that all the people I cared about were gone forever.
I prayed a lot in the beginning. I thought that I
might connect with Amber’s spirit, or my parents, or something of a higher
nature, on some communicable level. I got no sign. No response. Nothing. My
faith in everything had been destroyed. Every pleasure and amusement had been
instantaneously cut from my life.
To me, there was no God.
As facts and interviews replaced misconceptions and
rumors, I learned the true extent of the day. Two 767 commercial jet airplanes
loaded with fuel for trans-continental flight were hijacked and had hit the
towers. Another plane had smashed into the pentagon. And another had crashed in
rural Pennsylvania after the passengers revolted and attempted to take back the
cockpit from the terrorists.
It was unimaginable.
I’d wake up in the middle of the night lying rigid,
and sweaty, wrapped in bandages, clear IV tubes snaking down from medicine bags
and plugged into my arms. I’d wake in a black panic, thinking why me? Why was I
the only survivor above the impact? Why was I saved? Why didn’t I do more to
rescue Amber and my family? I should have gone up those stairs and figure a way
around the blockage! I should have convinced the firemen to go higher! I should
have been on time for breakfast and been at Amber’s side to calm her fears!
During the long, silent hours before the sun would
rise, as I floated in my hospital bed in a medicated half-sleep, the ‘what
if’s’ would begin flipping through my mind.
What if one of us had caught a cold and we had
cancelled breakfast? What if we had chosen a different restaurant? What if we
had made the reservation for 9:30 a.m. or 10:00 a.m.? What if we had decided to
stay in and cook breakfast for our families instead of going out? What if we
had met on a different day, at different time, and at a different place? Why
had fate and chance been so cruel and taking?
Thoughts played over and over in my head chewing
away at my capacity to accept.
As more and more survivors of that terrible day were
interviewed it came out that I had led those people to safety. Exaggerated
tales of my heroics flooded newspapers and television, both local and national.
When it was discovered that I was among the small pocket of people who were
outside the building when it collapsed and survived, and that I was the only
person out of 1,344 others to make it out alive above the 97th floor, people
started calling me an angel.
A hero.
A miracle of God.
Strangers visited me at the hospital and lavished
undeserved attention and charitable donations. The culpability I felt was
unimaginable. I’d witnessed numerous heroic acts that day. Hundreds who died
were unsung heroes sacrificing their lives trying to save others. I didn’t
deserve to be singled out and praised.
I tried to make everyone understand that I was
lucky, that’s all. The odds favored me. I wasn’t a miracle man. I wasn’t being
watched over or assisted by guardian angels. There were no higher forces at
work that singled me out for survival. I was just plain lucky. I didn’t deserve
nor desire the public’s praise and adoration. I wished to be left alone to
grieve.
Reporters didn’t care. They eyed me with wonder
wanting to know how I could have possibly survived. Even they seemed in awe and
wonder at my presence, as if a magical aura of fortuity surrounded me and by
coming in close proximity the good fortune could rub off on them; like a
communicable disease.
I sunk into melancholy.
I wanted to disappear.
My therapist told me I had survivor’s guilt and said
I might experience a fairly serious emotional breakdown when I finally fully
fathomed what I’d been through and comprehended my monumental loss and the
extent of my disfiguring, life-altering injuries.
A month after Amber and my parent’s memorials, I was
informed that New York’s Mayor Rudolf Guiliani was going to present me with a
medal for heroism and I would be honored at the state dinner the following
week. And the week after that I was invited to the White House to meet the
President.
My whole world had been torn to pieces and they
wanted to honor me?
For what?
Surviving?
Looking good, Neill. It's wonderful to see someone succeed.
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