2 WTC 72: My Experience on 9-11

The night of September 11, 2001, I went to sleep with no visible scars, no artifacts, just my memories still sheltered in a state of shock. I had descended 72 floors of a burning building and I was still wearing dust from the collapse of Tower 2. And in the years that have passed, I remember the details, but I still struggle to understand what the universe was trying to tell me that day. Upon every reflection, I can only surmise that life is precious.

I do have scars, they are just hidden and unpredictable. My body is still marked with memories that my mind can’t recall. I don’t remember sound from that day – I don’t remember what noises the plane made as it landed a few floors above me. Still, the sound of metal rattling and scraping lifts goosebumps off my arms. I can’t recall the sound of bodies dropping on the ground next to me. Yet in my dreams the jumpers visit me in droves, beckoning me to join them. And every time I tell this story my heart marks an allegro beat, as if running from danger.

I emerged from the Cortland Street subway stop, my blouse already stained with sweat. Autumn had not yet broken summer’s heat and the sky shone a pure blue. Earlier than I usually was, the thick swarm of regular commuters had yet to arrive, and I noticed the World Trade Center Plaza was quietly dwarfed by the two towers, with the fountain and sculpture standing guard at the center of the plaza.

The elevator ambled up to the 72nd floor, unhurried as I checked my watch more out of habit than impatience. My office was part of an old storage room that had been minimally reconfigured to house three offices and three cubicles. It offered no sunlight and the occasional passerby was clearly lost – it was like the engine room for the rest of the floor where 150 other people enjoyed sunnier, better trekked areas. After passing the day there, I would often check the weather online rather than bother to find a window.

At the other end of the floor, I poured a full cup of coffee. Two urns and a pastry tray had been laid out, as they were every morning. My boss, Joe, passed by with a nod, on his way to a meeting downstairs. His office now empty, I scurried in. I was 29 years old, just a year and a half into my first job on Wall Street, still trying to fake my way through discussions of stocks and bonds, P/Es and yields.

From the vantage point of my boss’ office, I felt perched on the very edge of Manhattan. The Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island stood below, forming the gateway to the island and to the American imagination. The Staten Island ferry made its slow shuttle back and forth, while barges hauled their wares into the Atlantic Ocean.

Borrowing his assistant’s computer, since mine had been squirreled away by our tech team, I began working on the day’s assignment – Joe script 09 11 01.doc – and telephoned the midtown office. “Sometimes, new bull markets come roaring out of the gates. Sometimes, they start out much more quietly, fitfully emerging from the long dark night of a protracted bear market. This time around, the bull market has followed the more fitful path.” My task was to help convince the legions of Morgan Stanley Dean Witter brokers that the stock market was about ready to soar again.

While reviewing the opening spiel by phone with my colleague a few miles to the north, I reached for the desk, feeling lightheaded. Not having registered the loud boom that ripped through the air, I considered refilling my coffee, but then noticed reams of paper raining past the window, obscuring the usually serene view of the water. Within seconds the ticker-tape scene was interrupted by a visual scream and balls of flames. “I … I’m gonna call you back.” My position far above the Statue of Liberty, which had just moments ago made me feel free and proud, was now a liability. “Get out of here!” I yelled to no one in particular.

Two colleagues stared at me dumbfounded. I yelled again, “Get out!” prompting one woman to grab the other and both ran towards the stairwell. I jogged around the floor, zigzagging between the perimeter and interior hallways yelling, “Get out of the building, there’s been an explosion!” People interrupted their casual morning routines to leave their desks, and some peered at me curiously as I ran by. I finished my tour of the floor and bounded into my mostly empty office to retrieve my bags. I had my usual purse plus an overnight bag – it was my cousin Tara’s birthday and we had been planning a celebration that night. I picked up just my purse and, after hesitating momentarily, I turned back for my book, reading material for the time I assumed I would be waiting outside before being allowed back to my perch.

As I approached the stairwell at the center of the floor, my co-workers were joining the stream of people already heading down. Bob, fire captain of our floor, stood guard at the door and looked at me hard.

“Do you hear a fire alarm?” he asked with a mocking smile. “’Cause I don’t.”

“What do you mean?” I asked incredulous and out of breath.

“When something happens, we’re supposed to wait for instructions from over the loudspeaker and so far, I haven’t heard anything. So there’s no reason to leave. Look at you. You’re starting a panic, you’re all out of breath, your eyes are wide. All these people are just looking for a day off. Do you think they’re going to wait around outside while this gets cleared up? No, they’re just going home.”

“Bob, there are flames flying by the window!”

“You need to calm down, you’re starting a panic.” He repeated. He gently took my arm and led me to the boardroom at the south end of the floor, near my Joe’s office. “A plane hit the other building. This one is fine,” he explained to me as if calming a child from a nightmare. In the boardroom, which normally had the same view of the tip of Manhattan as I had just been admiring, Bob carefully pulled back the doors of the corner armoire, switched on a large television and found CNN, whose reporters and live footage confirmed what he had said. The two familiar towers stood tall and proud on the screen, irreverent to the crowds in the stairwell and the debris outside the window. Tower 1 had clearly been hit but my building, Tower 2, was untouched. Still not convinced, I grabbed my purse and declared, “I don’t give a fuck, I’m leaving!” Then, halting my exit, the loudspeaker came alive just as Bob had presaged.

“Attention, attention,” said the calm voice, the same one we had heard at every one of our boring fire drills. “1 World Trade Center has been hit by a plane. But this building is secure. Stay where you are, there is no reason to evacuate. I repeat, stay at your desks.” I felt ridiculous.

I had just convinced almost all of my colleagues in the office to walk down 72 flights of stairs unnecessarily. Many of them heard that same announcement, turned around and started climbing back up. My heart was still beating fast, as the adreneline was replaced by embarrassment. In my head, I began to word apologies to my boss, who was also boss to everyone else on the floor. Phones started to ring and, in hopes of redeeming myself, I answered his. His wife, a colleague, and his secretary’s sister-in-law all called. “Yes, we’re in the other building. They just came over the loudspeaker to say that this one is fine. Most of the floor has evacuated anyway. Don’t worry.”

Chastened, I then called my mother across the river in New Jersey, “Hi Mom, how are ya? … Have you heard? … Oh, well turn on CNN … No, no, I’m in the other building. Everything’s fine here. … Yeah, I promise. I’ll call you later.”

Bob, I learned later, took a different tack and headed to the north side of the floor to watch events unfold, much how my brother and father used to chase after fire engines in our neighborhood to catch a little excitement. But what Bob found was far different and far more disturbing. Flames were now leaping out of Tower 1, seemingly just an arm’s length away from our building. A few floors above the fire, a man paused in a window and jumped. His body sailed down more than 100 floors, turning slowly in the air, resembling a plastic bag on a windy day. More jumpers appeared, making their own final escape. Then a man and a woman stepped for their final bow, looked at each other, joined hands and jumped in unison. Unable to watch anymore, Bob turned away from the window.

Joe’s phone lines finally quieted down, and the phone at the next desk began ringing. I hesitated, reluctant to take on receptionist duties for everyone, but I eventually walked over to calm that caller as well.

With the receiver not yet to my ear, the building rocked violently from side to side, nearly knocking me off my feet. File drawers, carefully filled with papers, swung open and slammed shut. Framed paintings fell off their hooks. Cracks appeared in the walls. I cried “Holy shit!” while watching the ceiling cave in like a garbage shoot, burying the spot where I had just been standing, including my purse and book. My morning coffee too was lost in the rubble.

From the southwest corner of the floor, I ran north yelling, “Is anyone still here?” I craved some company; the terror was mighty lonely. Two people, Paul and Helen, ran towards me. Waving their hands, they yelled in unison, “No, you can’t go that way, it’s on fire!” The north end of the floor was blanketed in smoke. Some of the hallways were filled with debris, making them unpassable. Paul and Helen had been stopped by a fireball that shot through the ceiling. I followed them back to my area and we clambered over the crumbled ceiling to get out.

By the stairs where Bob and I had argued just minutes ago, we found the security guard, Bernie. He had been at his usual post in the center of the floor when the wall exploded behind him, throwing flames and part of the wall against his back. After banging his head on the opposite wall, he fell to the ground. But I didn’t know this at the time. I only noticed the white powder that now covered his dark uniform and that he had lost his hat.

Huddled with my companions, I opened the door to the stairwell, and smoke billowed out. The stream of people that had been flowing down the stairs had completely dried up. Now it was blackness broken only by bits of light creeping in from behind us. The walls had collapsed in, covering the stairs, and I hesitated to go any further. Helen charged in in front of me, beginning to pull back six-foot sheets of dry wall so that we could pass through. After the door closed behind us, I gasped for air through the thick smoke and felt my way down in the darkness with Helen, Paul and Bernie close by. I kept repeating to myself out loud, “I’m okay, I’m okay.” Peering into the darkness, I imagined being trapped in that stairwell, so far from the ground, and surrounded by steel. I was still ignorant of the plane sitting just a few floors above us; I imagined that an explosion in the other tower had rocked ours, and that was still enough to terrify me.

Bob was a few minutes behind us. With his characteristic calmness, he stopped for bottles of water and cut up the receptionist’s sweater to wrap around his face and block out the smoke. Having been in the building during the 1993 bombing, he knew how long it could take to get out. Eight years earlier, the lights in the stairwells had all gone out, forcing people to feel their way down the stairs in the pitch darkness, marking their progress by calling out floor numbers to colleagues behind them.

After we had climbed down about five floors, lights began to reach toward us, one thankful difference from the 1993 experience. The air cleared some and the stairwell quickly filled up with other people. Only in hindsight did I realize this was because virtually no one above us survived. For the most part, the atmosphere was calm with intense anxiety just under the surface. But individual reactions were often incredibly different, ranging from denial to panic.

I noticed a woman trying to get service on her cell phone. “The phone shows I have a signal but I can’t get a call through,” she said with an irritated sigh. Her pockets bulged with tapes of backup data that she had collected from her technology department on the 96th floor immediately after the first explosion. She was certain that she and her technology colleagues would return to the building soon, just as they did after the 1993 bombing to make sure systems were running. “They’ll have to let us in.” And so went the relatively casual conversations on our way down to terra firma.

We were paired up, two to a stair as if in grammar school on our way to assembly. On many of the landings, people rested, surrounded by abandoned high-heeled shoes. By the fiftieth floor or so, many had sweated through their shirts and were gasping for breath. But everyone remained calm, encouraged each other and offered help. They pointed out an overturned coffee cup and gasped when one man fell down. “Hold on to the banister!” “I am, but it’s so slippery!” At one point my foot hit a wet patch and slipped right off the step. Standing up, I quickly announced, “I’m fine, I’m fine,” but the eyes that peered at me over the railings revealed the terror we were trying to keep at bay.

A man next to me still dressed in his dark suit and red tie carried on his back a woman, dazed with pieces of cement stuck in her hair. After getting hit on the head, she had been scared to walk down the stairs. “The building, it’s going to fall, I know it,” she mumbled. He reassured her that the building couldn’t possibly fall down because it had been constructed on a steel grid, specially designed to withstand major damage. I was sure the woman was a little crazy to be afraid of the building falling, but he comforted me too. Whenever the line of people halted or more smoke filtered in, she would panic and grab at his neck. I put my hand on her back and invented stories to explain what was happening just to calm her down. He carried her down 65 flights of stairs, refusing the help that others offered. After emerging from the stairs, the woman wanted to walk on her own – she didn’t want to embarrass herself by being carried in public.

Around the 30th floor, I remembered that Bernie had recently been diagnosed as diabetic. He was known among my colleagues for the candies that he handed out as folks walked by his station. But with his new diagnosis I was betting that he no longer carried those candies and that his blood sugar was probably getting low. My father had been diagnosed with diabetes about 10 years earlier and would need frequent reminding to watch his sugars. So I started asking those around me if they had any candy. Coming up empty handed, I yelled back to Bernie who was now a full flight behind me to ask if he was okay.

The crowd continued to snake down as a sign on each floor marked our progress. When we reached 3, I started to clap and cheer, “Alright guys, we made it!” But the mood remained somber and no one joined me in celebration. My brain, still in survival mode, only focused on the trek down the stairs, forgetting – or ignoring – what lay beyond. The stairway opened onto the plaza level of Tower 2, where I had just commuted in from. The area was surrounded on all sides by huge windows, and there I first glimpsed the devastation. The plaza between the two towers looked like a junkyard for giant erector sets, with grossly enlarged children’s toys that had been the victims of a temper tantrum. I expected to see larger pieces of an airplane (though I still imagined it was just one small plane that had accidentally run into Tower 1), instead everything had broken into small pieces after the long fall. Still recognizable were the bandstand, fountain, and large sculpture which I had passed on my way in to work an hour before. Outside the window before me I saw a leg, charred and separated from its body. Covering my mouth in horror, I turned away to avoid drawing attention to the sight.

Police funneled us down a pair of halted escalators to the mall level below the towers. “GET OFF YOUR CELL PHONES. KEEP IT MOVING PEOPLE.” The cops looked like a cast of extras on Law and Order. A few wore the usual uniform of a city cop or Port Authority officer, while others had been clearly called in from undercover duties – one a homeless-looking man, another a hip-hop-looking tough guy – with nothing but a badge and an authoritative voice to distinguish them. Helen stood at the top of the escalator, crying to herself, waiting for her boss, Paul, who had fallen behind us. She worried about his ability to climb down all those stairs. “I can’t leave him there,” she sobbed. I returned to the stairwell to look for him, asking around if anyone had seen him. Someone had seen him recently, but that was the best I could do. I finally convinced her to leave the building with me and wait for him outside.

After descending to the mall level, the throngs were punctuated by the walking wounded – some with burns and gashes, others having trouble walking. One woman was burned and cut up one side of her body, from head to foot. When the police insisted she go outside for medical attention, she continued walking, eyes focused straight ahead, constantly encouraged by a man beside her, but not touching her. Her right foot, shoeless, left a bloody print with every step. A man carried a small woman and asked for a wheelchair. After he too was directed outside, the woman, still as a doll, peered over his shoulder.

Despite the blood and the confusion, some were still wrapped in their cocoons of every day life. A dozen or so people lined up patiently at the payphones inside the mall. I searched my pockets thinking of joining them, then remembered my buried purse and continued on instead. A policeman stood yelling at them, “Get out of here!” but few moved.

As we climbed from below ground to the street level, dozens of firefighters and EMTs rushed down against the tide, many of them unlikely to return. As we exited the building, a receiving line greeted us. Much like honeymooners in Hawaii are greeted with laias, each of us leaving the building got a tag around each neck, color coded to denote the seriousness of our injuries – green, yellow, red. Bernie got a yellow tag for the now prominent bump on his head, and Helen did for her limp from arthritic knees. I followed them across the street with my green tag.

Forty-five minutes after beginning my decent from the 72nd floor, I emerged from the World Trade Center. The sun was still shining as brightly as it had during my regular commute, but the scene had turned from calm to chaos. Just opposite the exit, at the corner of Church and Cortland Streets, emergency crews had set up a makeshift triage area, surrounded by a few ambulances and gurneys. A priest had already hung a wide, white stole around his neck, looking around at the wounded, ready to dispense last rites. A man to my right lay on the ground with a puncture wound to the chest and burns on his face and arms. His head rested in the lap of someone I recognized from Morgan Stanley as a journalist snapped photos of them both. Others with burns were scattered around the ambulances. One woman waited quietly on a gurney with both arms raised and sheets of her skin hanging down. While most people on the streets had been thrown from their workday, the EMTs, the priest and the journalist had only just arrived.

A man in a uniform and name tag walked around with a pitcher, pouring water into paper cups. I asked if I could do anything to help. “I don’t know, I just work at the Hilton over there. I couldn’t think of anything else to do.” I nodded, took a paper cup in my hands and watched the water pour in. I threw it back feeling each drop scrub away the dust and smoke and fear and devastation. The water drowned out the crying, dampened the sirens and quieted the screams. For a moment at least.

After finding a comfortable spot for Bernie and Helen to sit down, I approached several EMTs looking for some glucose for Bernie. I stretched my memory back to the Introduction to Diabetes course I had sat through with my dad when he was first diagnosed with a tricky pancreas. “When in doubt, treat a person as if they had low blood sugar.” After three tries, an EMT searched through his kit to find a tube of liquid sugar. When I returned Bernie looked at me with a dumbfounded smile so I read the directions and arbitrarily told him to eat half.

Through his thick Guyanan accent, he reminded me of the bump which had swollen noticeably at the middle of his forehead. “I got me a boongee on me head. … Yeah, fire came out behind me and trew me against de wall.” So I set off again to track down an ice pack. When I returned, Helen took the pack and put it on the back of his neck thinking it was to cool him off. She hadn’t been able to decode his accent – despite her own Scottish one – and still hadn’t noticed his boongee. When I corrected her, she laughed at herself and the ice found its rightful place.

After numerous unsuccessful tries and ignoring shouts to get off cell phones, I finally reached my mom on Helen’s phone. At the sound of her voice, I wanted to sob into the receiver. “Mom, it’s me. … I’m okay.” Another woman in front of me sobbed uncontrollably while hyperventilating. For the past hour and a half, I had remained emotionless. I was an observer, I even looked side to side, aware that I would recount these events, I wanted to remember. But I didn’t yet feel. I was mesmerized that people had allowed themselves to break down emotionally. Even with the blood and wreckage, I hadn’t yet fully realized that lives were at stake – the day still felt like an ordeal that we were going to pull through together. With my mom’s voice came the first realization that more was at stake.

After about 15 minutes in the triage area, the crowd around me gasped as more people jumped from the upper floors, and I finally shifted my focus from the chaos around me, to the towers. Smoke consumed much of the two buildings, whose middles had disappeared; the fire was spreading. I still didn’t know what had happened but I turned back to Bernie and Helen and said, “Let’s get out of here.”

It wasn’t clear, however, where to go. No one acted in charge. Everyone still seemed in various states of shock, including the rescue workers. While some ran away from the towers and refused to look back, other people milled around, staring and taking photographs with disposable cameras as if on an impromptu Big Apple sightseeing tour. We grabbed on to one another and started walking east down Fulton Street, past historic Trinity Church, where I used to sometimes have lunch on a bench amid several-hundred-year-old tombstones. Making our way through the crowds, only then did we learn the true story: two planes, one in each building, a terrorist attack, the Pentagon too.

After covering a block and a half, we took a break because both Helen and Bernie were having a hard time walking. We found refuge in a nearby bar, the Blarney Stone, and I pulled over three stools to face the televisions. Most of the tables were occupied by those seeking refuge from the terror outside, notable because of their suits now covered in white dust. But the bar itself was filled in by older men with scruffy beards, thumbing through the morning’s paper while sipping their beers, their morning routines largely unaltered. No sooner had I sat on the stool than a thunderous roar sounded behind me as the building shrank on the TV screen. Tower 2, our tower, crumbled. Through windows on either side of me, I could see people running at top speed as if pursued by Godzilla.

After briefly hesitating, we decided to leave the shelter of the bar. Clutching each other again, we walked as briskly as we could while others charged by us. But the buildings soon sent forth a cloud of dust that barreled toward us and engulfed the narrow streets. I pulled my shirt over my face as smoke and debris rolled over us. At the corner of Fulton and Pearl, just a few blocks before the East River, one lone cop stood a head above the crowd and pointed his right finger north, trying to direct the mob toward the Brooklyn Bridge. Crowds were already herding their way out of Manhattan, passing cars lining the bridge in both directions.

Fearing the bridge might also be a target, we continued north past the crossing. Turning a corner, Tower 1 disintegrated in the distance, overtaken by yet another cloud of debris. Mothers screamed while their children cried in their strollers. Some stood in shock while others ran in the opposite direction. I still watched as if it were a movie.

Chinatown, businessmen in suits carried their briefcases, looking like they were on their way to an important meeting, except that they were completely covered in white soot. By then, the authorities had sealed off Manhattan, halted the subways, and barricaded the roads to lower Manhattan except for emergency vehicles.

Further up the street was a hospital prepared for a deluge of injuries that never arrived. Empty gurneys lined the entrance and handwritten signs – “x-rays,” “triage” – were posted on the walls. In the triage area, we sat down while dozens of chairs remained idle around us. A nurse asked, “Are you hurt?”

“No.”

“Does your chest bother you?”

“No.”

“Are your eyes itchy? Can we clean them out?”

“No, they feel fine.”

Helen and I both kept pointing to Bernie’s head, indicating that he was the one who needed medical attention. He was eventually whisked off to x-rays while Helen and I were ushered to our next stop on the circuit, mental health.

We were then interviewed by a social worker in a borrowed office. The same basic information at first, then questions about our day. “Where were you this morning?” “Were you scared?” It was our first opportunity to tell our stories and also the first time that Helen and I had compared our experiences shortly after the first plane hit. At the same time, I held back. I didn’t want someone to go digging around in my psyche just yet – who knew what might show up.

I managed to Tim to make sure I could stay at his apartment since I didn’t feel like walking home to Brooklyn.

“Kara, you know that no one’s heard from John.” Our cousin, a few years older than me but already a high-powered trader and father of two, worked at Cantor Fitzgerald.

“Doesn’t he work in 5 World Trade?”

“No, Tower 1, on the 105th floor.”

“Oh no.”

I wandered into a waiting area and devoured some supermarket cookies that had been left out. Mounted televisions blared the non-stop news and I watched the plane run into our building for the first time. I stood transfixed, half-eaten cookie hanging from my hand, staff whispering around me. When I looked away from the TV for a moment, someone turned it off. I later made my way to the bathroom and looked at myself for the first time. My dark hair had turned grey with soot and my eyes were framed in white dust. My pink blouse was untucked and half unbuttoned from pulling it over my face and my shoes had dug red rings around my feet. After a few minor adjustments, I resembled what I looked like climbing out of the subway that morning. But I hesitated, I didn’t want to appear normal. I didn’t want to blend in with everyone who had watched the towers crumble on television. I was different and part of me wanted proof.

The farther I got from the World Trade Center, the more out of place I felt, like I had just stepped onto a movie set on a beautiful day, with blue skies, and a bright, warm sun. By the north end of Chinatown, life seemed strangely normal. People shopped, bragging on their cell phones about having seen the towers fall. The Salvation Army, shelters, churches all displayed signs offering bathrooms, food, and water. The Red Cross had already recruited volunteers to hand out glasses of water. The National Guard had started to arrive, wearing camouflage uniforms and carrying their guns.

I summoned up the courage to call John’s mother and his sister Tara (whose birthday we were supposed to be celebrating that evening) who were stuck in Connecticut, and then I spoke with his wife Concha, terrified in their Upper East side apartment with two young children. I felt guilty and afraid that my being alive would make them more bitter about their own potential loss. I tried to comfort them with explanations of where he could be and why he might not have called, though it felt pointless. “Tara, is there anything I can do?” Interrupted with sobs she pleaded, “Please, look for my brother. Please?” I didn’t know what to do. How do you find a victim of a terrorist attack on New York? “OK.”

My feet red, swollen and ringed with blisters, I set off again, this time with Tim to check the local hospitals. With any step down a stair, my leg muscles seized up with the memory of seventy-two flights. We went to the West Village to check the patient lists at St. Vincent’s hospital but found nothing. The only company with its own information desk was Cantor Fitzgerald, John’s company, but they hadn’t found a single person all day. Volunteers across the room gave the same head shakes to other hopeful friends and family.

By the following day, people were finding their way back into the city. As relatives converged at John’s apartment, Tara organized search parties. She grouped us into teams of two, with a packet that included a list of hospitals and information centers to comb and a pile of posters with pictures of John. Tara had dutifully written his name, age, height, weight, office location and identifying marks, “shamrock tattoo left back hip.” His face peered at me from those pages as we drove around the city. It was just one of thousands of others looking out from phone polls, bulletin boards, and impromptu public shrines. I saw some of those faces so many times I began to recognize them. Communities held candlelight vigils and prayer services in hopes of praying their loved ones back to life.

Within a couple of days, the small hospital information centers had been transformed and consolidated first at the armory and then at Pier 94; too many families missing too many people. Translators were available in a wide variety of languages and social workers roamed the halls. The operation had grown larger but the headshakes were the same. We were once again greeted with headshakes, “No. No Henwood listed.” They wanted to help, to offer positive news, but the lists couldn’t revive the dead.

Hovering ever-present was the smell of a former landmark and the small city it used to house. As the wind shifted, the stench grew stronger. For days the few small shops that were open kept up a brisk business in face masks. Elegantly dressed women with smart purses and high-heels covered their faces as they walked hurriedly through the streets. My chest felt raw and heavy from inhaling the smoke.

The following Monday, marking some return to normalcy, markets re-opened, and I took the train to my midtown office, crossing over the Manhattan Bridge with one of the best views of the city. Passengers stood and looked toward where the World Trade Center once stood, now just a gaping hole in the skyline. I too searched the familiar buildings, mentally placing where my office used to be. As if to remind me, a black cloud of smoke hung over the spot.

As I walked the rest of the way to work, the city itself seemed to be mourning the wound in its skyline. Ambulances, fire trucks and bulldozers crisscrossed the city and even the suburbs, sounding their sirens and flashing their lights. Taxi drivers were reluctant to speed ahead and pedestrians hesitated to step off the curb, as if in doing so they would hamper the rescue effort. No one could yet admit that there was no one left to rescue but ourselves.

At my office, colleagues cried and exchanged hugs when not resurrecting missing data. My computer’s screensaver had been switched from a company logo to a waving American flag. I was hounded by the grief counselors tasked with sewing up our wounded psyches. I eventually shared my story with them and for a while repeated it to anyone who would listen.

At a service for John and others from his hometown who were missing I cried for the first time. And the tears, once summoned, came like a torrent. Protected by the walls of the church, I thought of John making a dash across his floor similar to my own, opening the door to the stairwell but finding no exit. I imagined the people I passed in my retreat from the building who didn’t return. As grief knows no strict boundaries, I also cried in penance for my own good fortune, I sobbed for my father whose voice was with me as I fled, despite his death 18 months earlier. The grief kept digging, worming its way through every loss and heartache I had ever suffered, throwing up heaving sobs in its wake. My brain was finally peeling back its protective cocoon and I was left to face the world head on.

Soon enough the services – which had been carefully orchestrated to leave open the possibility of someone’s return – were replaced by the funerals. John’s colleague who sat next to him was found within days of the attack and his family held a funeral almost immediately. In retrospect, they were lucky. John’s parents filled out police reports, and swabbed their mouths to collect DNA samples in hopes of matching them with some fragment found in the rubble. Then, after days of hoping beyond hope, they too began to make arrangements for a memorial service. Instead of a casket, they placed a posterboard with photographs of John in front of the altar.

Eventually I became more reluctant to share my story. In those early days I had hoped that in telling it, my experience would become more real to me. And once I started I couldn’t really stop. My recollections would come tumbling out, picking up the pace as I went. A few times I physically retraced my path away from the buildings with friends who were visiting. I would point out where first I exited the building and we would stop for a beer at the Blarney Stone where I took refuge shortly before Tower 2 fell. But after a while the World Trade Center became just another part of the itinerary, along with the Metropolitan Museum and Katz’s Deli, and my story started to feel like fodder for cocktail parties.

Despite the fact that I don’t recount my story very often anymore, I still think about 9/11. The day still appears in my dreams, also less often, but no less virulently. I have few physical reminders of that day, no souvenirs, no visible scars. My cousin’s death remains a gaping wound in my family, one that’s been bandaged over and salved, but hurts nonetheless. Every September 11th John’s siblings and parents make an annual pilgrimage to the World Trade Center, joined by other families pulled from across the city who I imagine carry similar wounds, called to grieve on a public stage.

I used to think to myself that the universe would’ve been so much more efficient with fewer loose ends had 9/11 claimed me instead of John. I was single with no children while he had a stay-at-home wife and two young kids. I was the more expendable one. But in the years since he died I’ve complicated my life, in a good way, creating my own potential loose ends. I’m married with a son and two daughters. Because of them it is easy to find meaning and richness in life although they leave me vulnerable to loss in a way I wasn’t back then.

I commute through the World Trade Center regularly, having watched the space transform from Ground Zero to tourist attraction to construction site and now to memorial site. I hope it won’t be too long before the new towers allow me to admire the Statue of Liberty standing watch over her harbor as the Staten Island ferry performs its daily shuttle.

Though time hasn’t brought the definitive answers that I had hoped it would, the distance does offer some clarity. I am still stupefied that a city can be reduced to nothing beneath a beautiful blue sky, that so many lost faces can peer out from a single wall to never again tell a joke or say good morning, that a hole can stretch so wide and the sky can reach so high, that people can be so wounded yet not bear a single visible scar.

I am both horrified and pleased that there are no easy answers. I am so thankful that I can both laugh and cry with abandon, that a person can love a total stranger, that determination can be so strong, that sunlight can still renew and that unseen wounds can indeed mend. I see that life is precious. Maybe the secret to life is as terrifyingly simple as that. And I think that’s enough.