CHATROOM
LOVE
Chapter Nineteen
Trudy was silent for a moment, pulling the babies into
her lap. She cuddled them, and then finally spoke.
"There were a lot of people late for work that
morning, which turned out to be a blessing, but I was waiting for one of my
co-workers to get there, and was getting impatient. We were supposed to be
working on a project together. Anyway, I was drinking a cup of coffee, checking
my e-mail, and chatting with a couple of other co-workers when she came in,
panicking and hyperventilating. We’d heard a thump, and the lights had
flickered for a second, but we really hadn’t given it much thought until then.
"She told us that a plane had just hit the North
Tower of the World Trade Centre. Of course, we were all shocked, and ran to a
window to see. It was horrible.
"There were flames in
the airspace south of the North Tower and west of us. It turned out that the
flames were from fuel that had gone clear through the first tower, but we
didn’t know that then. All we knew was that a plane had hit the tower, doing
massive damage. We didn’t know if the plane had hit it deliberately, or if it
had been an accident, but the fact that it was bad was obvious.
"I stood there frozen for a moment, and then took
off running. Ever since Mom and Dad died, I’d been terrified of fires, and this
one looked like it could take out a whole block or more. Even after the worst
flames were gone, there were still thousands of flaming papers in the air. All
I could think about was getting out. My boss yelled at me to stop, and so did
my co-workers, but nothing was standing in my way. I was determined to escape.
"I got into the elevator and went down about
thirty floors before it occurred to me that an elevator was one of the worst
places to be in a fire. At the sixty-third floor, I got out and headed for the
stairs. I went down them faster than I thought possible—there was so much
adrenaline racing through me that I hardly noticed how far I had run. While I
was running, they flashed the emergency strobe lights, rang out the alarm
system, and announced that the building was secure. I almost stopped, thinking
that maybe they’d gotten the fire out and had the situation in the other tower
under control. I went into one of the offices, and there were people gathered
around a window, some of them crying, some of them just looking shocked. I
looked to see what they were staring at, and saw people falling, jumping from
the upper floors of Tower One."
Trudy blinked her eyes rapidly, rocking the babies as
they began to cry, sensing their mother’s distress. "It was the most
horrible thing I’ve ever seen. There were still flames and smoke coming from
the North Tower, and maybe that was what drove people to jump, but they had no
chance of surviving a fall from that height. I saw one woman fall who was still
clutching her purse, as though she might need it when she got to the ground.
"Then I panicked again, afraid that the fire
would spread to the South Tower and kill more people. I went back to the
stairwell and started running down the stairs again. I had stopped on the
fifty-second floor, and when I was passing the forty-seventh floor, there was a
rumble and the building started to shake. It seemed to twist a little, and part
of the ceiling above me came apart, as did a little bit of the floor below. I
was in the process of taking a step when this happened, so I lost my footing
and tumbled down to the landing. Luckily, it was only about five stairs down to
the landing, so I wasn’t badly hurt. I twisted my ankle a little, but someone
else who was also on the stairs helped me up. There was this awful swaying
motion to the building, like it was about to go over, but luckily it stopped
after a few seconds.
"I knew, somehow, that a plane had hit our tower,
too. I don’t know how I knew—it could have been an explosion or something.
Maybe it just seemed logical, since a plane had hit the other tower. Anyway,
the man who had helped me up went along with me as we went down the next few
flights of stairs. When we reached the forty-fourth floor, we went out because
there was a sky lobby there, and there was a security guard there trying to
help a man with massive head injuries. He was talking to a couple of other men,
telling them that his phones were out, and that the man he was trying to help
needed medical attention. They were the only ones there.
"We didn’t approach them—there was nothing we
could do—but the man who had helped me up left to see if he could find help for
the injured man. That was the last I saw of him. I hope he made it out alive.
He’d been talking to me on the way down, just making conversation to distract
me, and he’d said he was just two months away from retirement, and he and his
wife were planning to travel. It would be horrible to be so close to fulfilling
a dream like that, and then lose everything you’d hoped for in such a terrible
disaster. I never even learned his name, so there was no way I could check to
find out what had happened.
"My ankle was hurting more by that time, but I
didn’t stop. I went back to the stairwell and continued down. I took out my
cell phone and tried to call 9-1-1, but I’d damaged it somehow when I fell down
the stairs, and it didn’t work. I stopped on the thirtieth floor and used a
receptionist’s phone to call Kenneth and tell him that I was alive, and then
called the twins’ baby-sitter and told her the same thing. Kenneth urged me to
get out of the building as quickly as possible, for fear that a fire would
overtake it, or someone would do further damage to it—by that time, terrorists
were strongly suspected in the plane crashes, especially since it had also
happened at the Pentagon. I tried calling 9-1-1 again, but someone had already
reported the injured man on the forty-fourth floor, so went back to the stairs
and kept going down.
"I was moving more slowly by then—my ankle was
really hurting—but I kept going all the way down to the Plaza level. It was
shocking, not so much because of what was there, but because of what wasn’t.
Usually, there was a flowing fountain, businesspeople coming and going,
vendors, tourists…and this time it was deserted. I just stared for a moment
before moving on, going down a stopped escalator—the electricity was out
there—and followed the instructions of some women at the bottom of the
escalator. They told me to go through the Victoria’s Secret shop and exit
through the Sam Goody store. There were policemen and firemen around, and some
other evacuees, but no one was panicking there. Either they felt safe so close
to the exit, or everyone had expended their panic somewhere else.
"I got out of the building and crossed Liberty
Street, going as fast as I could to avoid falling debris. There was no traffic,
and almost no people except for a few evacuees and emergency workers. There
were some emergency vehicles, but it was mostly deserted, like the freeway when
there’d been a bomb threat back in California. There were some people standing
in doorways, protecting themselves from the falling debris, but otherwise—it
was so deserted that it was eerie. I didn’t even see anyone from the media
there, which surprised me.
"It didn’t seem safe to stay near the building,
so I walked past the fire hall and down another couple of blocks, to Trinity
Church, where there were a few people gathered. I could see the world trade
Centre from there, and one guy said that he thought it might go down. It was
built strong—all that steel and everything—but then, it usually just faced wind,
not crashing airliners and fire. The way the building had twisted and leaned to
the side, I thought he might be right, but it was horrifying to see that he
was. The building just started to collapse, leaving no chance for the people
still inside the upper floors at all, and almost none for those on the lower
floors. This happened just minutes after I had left the building.
"There was an enormous amount of dust coming
toward the church, so all of us ran. Someone helped me along—I don’t know who.
We went along Broadway to another building, where we waited for about half an
hour for the dust to clear enough to make the air breathable. The sky was full
of dust, ashes, smoke, and soot, and it coated the ground like a warm snow.
There were no cell phones or land lines working at all, so there was no way to
phone anyone and let them know that I had made it out safely.
"I knew that I would have to walk home—there
didn’t seem to be any taxis or buses around, and I doubted the subway system
was running. A woman with a sprained wrist who had been in the building I had
taken shelter from the dust in had taken off her Ace bandage and given it to me
when she saw how badly I was limping, but it still hurt to walk, and our
apartment was a good thirty blocks away. I guess I could have stayed where I
was, but I wanted to get home to the twins.
"I started walking, in spite of the pain, but
before I had gone more than a couple of blocks someone from the media saw me,
and asked if I was from the World Trade Centre. I don’t know what tipped her
off—maybe it was the fact that a woman in a business suit was limping down the
street, covered in dust and soot. I said that I was, so she wanted to interview
me. There was a cameraman there, too, and pretty soon some other people saw what
was going on and came over to me, too. I just wanted to get home, but everyone
seemed so concerned, and they already had the cameras running. I let them
interview me about what happened—that was the interview that was on television.
I didn’t give all the details, because I was sure that there were other people
who also had stories to tell, and then started walking home again.
"I don’t know how I made it so far on my sprained
ankle, but somehow I made it fifteen blocks before I had to stop. There was
more traffic at that distance, so I was able to hitch a ride. I know that
hitchhiking is dangerous, but by that time I didn’t care. They dropped me off
at my building, and I made my way up to my apartment, more grateful than I’d
ever been for the elevator. The baby-sitter was waiting in the living room with
the twins in her arms, and Kenneth was watching the news, hoping for some word
on me. I guess they hadn’t aired the interview yet, or hadn’t aired it on the
station he was watching.
"I’d lost my key, so I banged on the door for
them to let me in. Kenneth opened the door, and I’ve never seen such relief on
anyone’s face. He grabbed me, soot, dust, and all, and carried me into the
living room. The twins started screaming when they saw me—I looked pretty
frightening with that coating of dust and soot. Kenneth had come home to wait
for me after I’d called him, hoping that I would make it out.
"I was so glad to be home, in spite of the crying
babies and sore ankle. Kenneth would hardly let me out of his sight, except to
allow me to shower and change. The twins stopped crying after I was cleaned up,
and I just sat in Kenneth’s arms and cuddled them. The sitter, who is a
neighbour of ours, left and spread the word that I had survived the World Trade
Centre, and pretty soon half the people on our floor were there, helping with
the babies, bringing food, watching the news. A doctor who lives in the
building came down and examined my ankle, and the minister of our church came
over to see how I was doing."
She paused, taking a deep breath. "Since then,
life has felt more precious to me. I don’t take it for granted anymore. No one
expected those planes to hit the World Trade Centre—or if they did, they didn’t
tell us—and it brought home to me how good it is to be alive. Little things
that I used to not really notice mean more now." Trudy turned to her
brother. "I think I understand your philosophy on life now, Jack—make each
day count. You never know what’s going to happen next, so make the most of each
moment, and value what’s really important in life—the people who care about
you, and doing the things that make life worthwhile. I’ve spent too much time
wasting my life, first with partying and having a good time, with no thought to
the future, and later with trying to make as much money as possible. Those
things don’t matter as much now, though I still miss my boss and co-workers,
all of whom I liked and none of whom made it out alive."
Her eyes overflowed, and she wiped them quickly.
"Please excuse me. This is a difficult subject to talk about. So many
people died in such a horrible way, and I knew some of them."
Everyone was silent, none of them condemning her for
crying, after hearing the tragic story. Rose and Dawn were both teary-eyed
themselves, and Jack moved to sit beside his sister, giving her and the babies
a hug. John leaned towards his cousin.
"At least you made it out alive. We were all
worried about you when we heard what had happened, especially Jack. You and
your family are welcome to stay here as long as you like. We’ll find space for
you somewhere."
"Thanks, Uncle John." Trudy nodded, glancing
at her husband, who looked like he agreed with the idea, and then leaned back
tiredly against the couch, closing her eyes as Jack and Kenneth took the
fussing babies from her.