by Hannah Paige
There was a deafening silence on the other line and April felt her lungs halt for a second; she needed to hear the young woman’s voice, just needed to know that she was still on the line. “Ma’am, can you hear me?”
“646-754-1124. That’s my number.”
“Thank you, ma’am. And where are you calling from?” April felt ridiculous asking that and bit her tongue for sounding so goddamn green.
“I’m in the tower! The North tower. Oh, God, there’s so much smoke. It’s hot in here, I can’t breathe.”
“Okay, ma’am, I need you to stay calm, can you do that? Help is on the way,” April repeated from the reel of automated messages that she’d stored in her brain during her class-training. Her fingers flew across the keyboard, trying to get in contact with the fire department—it was standard procedure to try to connect the caller with them in this situ…April’s train of thought pulled to a screeching halt. This wasn’t like any other situation. She needed to get that through her head. She had no idea what had just happened moments ago, not a clue, really. But the woman on the line didn’t need to know that. She didn’t need some mechanical responses from a phone clerk in the police department. She needed to hear a human being and she needed to be told that everything was going to be okay. And damned if April was going to fail her.
“The fire department is coming. Can you hear them? They’re so loud, I can hear them from where I am.”
The woman coughed, “Is it…cool there?”
April took a minute, deciphering the muffled voice, “Cool?”
Lie, she reminded herself, comfort her, even if April had to ignore the AC unit above her head to do it. “No, no it’s stifling where I am. Ma’am, can you tell me what floor you’re on? The fire department is on their way,” she reminded, keeping the hope of rescue current in the conversation.
“One hundred and one, one hundred and one, please hurry. I can’t breathe, there’s so much smoke. The floor is hot. It’s so hot.”
April could hear the tremors in the woman’s—really more of a girl’s—voice, even through the garbled phone, “I understand, please try to stay calm. Are you with anyone?”
“Yeah, yes, I’m with—” a stretched, swollen pause pulsed in April’s ears, “I’m with Willard Shailey and there’s a woman here too.”
“Okay, three people on floor one hundred and one. You’re doing great, really great, just stay calm. How do they look? Are they breathing?” April tried to cling to some normal questions: asking about the state of people other than the caller.
“Yeah, they’re breathing,”
A pause.
“Eyes are open. Oh, God, it’s hot. It’s so hot, I can barely breathe. Help! I need help!” she screamed, “Oh, I don’t want to die. I’m young, I’m only—one, I haven’t even bought my first drink yet, I can’t—”
Twenty-one. Where had April been on September eleventh in 1989, when she was twenty-one? The young caller started to breathe into the phone in uneven puffs, pulling April back to reality. “No, no, no, you’re not going to die. The fire department is coming, they’ll get to you. You’re going to be okay; can you tell me your name?”
The puffs of air that fuzzed through the phone slowed down, “JJ, my name’s JJ Chase.”
April forced herself to take a breath, unaware that she’d been holding it for quite some time now, “Okay, that’s J-J C-H-A-S-E, correct?”
“Yes, JJ, that’s my name. I—” More coughing, “I can’t breathe, there’s so much smoke.”
“Okay, JJ, I know it’s hard, but you have to stay calm, okay? Just try to breathe in and out. Is there a fire? Can you see a fire on your floor?”
“No, no, there’s no fire, but the floor is hot. I’m…I’m sweating and hot. I can’t…I need help, please hurry. Where’s the fire de—”
“JJ, they’re coming, I promise they’re coming. JJ, just stay with me. I’m not going anywhere. Can you tell me where you are on the floor? Floor one hundred and one, correct?”
“Yeah,” her tone was angry, helpless, and growing ragged, “Yeah. I’m in Ms. Perkins’ office, I…there’s one window, I can…I think it looks at the bay. I don’t know! I don’t know, I can barely see. I can’t—I can’t breathe.”
“Okay, JJ, you’re doing really well, just try to—”
“I don’t want to die, I was—” her voice cut off, “interview. I don’t want to die, please, I don’t—”
“JJ, hey, you’re not going to die, not today. You’re not going to die without having your first margarita. Okay? There’s a lot of floors to get through, but the fire department is moving as fast as they can.”
“Oh, God…I…we’re at the top, smoke, smoke rises. I can’t breathe, it’s so hot. It’s getting bad here. It’s getting really bad. I don’t—”
April could hear heartbreaking sobs escape through the line and she had to bite her bottom lip to keep herself from crying; today was not the day for her empathy to take over.
“JJ, just try to hang in there, help is coming. I’m going to stay right here with you.” Sirens blared through the phone connection, along with chopper blades whirring outside April’s window.
“What happened? I mean, how—”
April wished, with everything she had, that she could give the girl some answers, “I’m still here, JJ. I—” She couldn’t say that she didn’t know how or why this happened, she absolutely could not, anything but the unknown. People tended to panic even more if a person in authority, or April, in this case, admitted that they were in the dark too. “The fire department is coming, JJ. Just try to stay calm,” she heard the girl heaving through the phone, her breaths coming shorter and faster; terror was setting in. “JJ, I need you to calm down, save your air. Just try to calm down.”
“I can’t breathe. I need air. I don’t want to die, none of us do.”
“I understand, JJ. And I’m—”
“It’s black and it burns, it hurts my eyes. There’s so much smoke. Where’s the fire department?!”
April inhaled sharply, feeling the stab of guilt that accompanied her fresh air, “They’re coming to you, JJ. They’re coming.”
“I—I was supposed to call Ian, Ian, after my…he doesn’t know. He won’t know. I don’t want to die…Da Perkins, Amanda Perkins, P-E-R-K-I-N-S, is next to me, she’s the woman I…here to see. She—” Garbling, “She has a son, she doesn’t want to leave him. We don’t want to die today, we’re not ready. We weren’t ready for this!”
April pulled her headset tighter around her ears, “JJ, I need you to calm down, just try to—”
“Ian doesn’t know, he won’t—I can’t die, today, I don’t want to—oh my God! Oh my God!”
It was the sound of someone dropping a phone while the line is still live, magnified by a thousand.
“JJ? JJ, hello?” April felt her voice tremble, clutch the sides of her throat as she tried to push it out with confidence, “JJ?”
She stood up from her desk. A cloud of smoke the size of New York City had replaced the North Tower of the World Trade Center, tackled it to the ground, leaving the standing Twin alone. And April couldn’t even help one girl.
Part Two
May 3, 2011
Rick
Chapter One
“When I was in active duty, my sergeant and I were ordered to evacuate a building. It was a shack, really, with a flimsy roof and walls that shook when the people inside tried to get out all at once. The two of us had gotten everyone out in time, and I was about to leave. My sergeant was taking a final look around the main room when a grenade went off and the ceiling collapsed. I was fine, being halfway out of the building at the time of the explosion. Sergeant wasn’t so well off. A large portion of the ceiling had fallen on top of him, pinning his legs to the ground. When I tried to help him, one of the first questions that I had to ask was if he could feel anything. Does anything hurt? When he laughed at me and said, ‘Yes, dammit everything hurts like a mother.’ I was relieved. But when I was t
he one stuck under a pile of rubble with smoke suffocating me, heat tingling every nerve ending in my body, and pain piercing through my entire left side, I just couldn’t quite grasp the same sense of relief that I had before. I got lucky that day. When I tell people that, they don’t believe me, they think I’m being modest or humble, but I’m not. I could have lost my legs that day. It’s weird to think that in a blink of an eye I could have lost the ability to use half of my body. But that’s how fast terror struck. One morning everyone woke up, kids went to school, parents went to work. Dogs were walked and newspapers were…” that damn word still caught in Rick’s throat, even after all this time, “Were brought in. People just. Lived.”
“They,” he caught himself and corrected, “we had no concept of what could happen because we were at home, or at work, or on a field trip. We were safe. And then we blinked. A second passed and lives were lost.” Rick took a seat on the stool, squinting in the harsh auditorium lighting. “So, when I say that I got lucky, I’m not trying to gain your sympathy. I don’t want it. I’m just telling the truth.”
The crowd of children erupted in a storm of high-pitched claps. It didn’t matter how many schools Rick spoke at, he was always slightly disturbed by how jubilant the crowd was at the end of his speeches. He stood up and waved at the crowd of middle school students and took his leave off stage.
Steven met him there with a camera-ready grin, “Wow, what a great crowd, huh? Amazing, just amazing. Next time try to maybe steer the discussion in a more upbeat direction. End on a positive note. Think you can do that?”
The young man practically vibrated as he tried to give some advice to Rick on a subject he knew absolutely nothing about. Steven was barely old enough to drink legally and had been working for an outreach program that tried to connect people touched by acts of terror for about two years. Because of this, he thought he knew everything about relating to what Rick had been through. The kid couldn’t have been more than eleven or twelve on that Tuesday ten years ago. He had no concept of what it really felt like. Not a clue.
Rick rubbed his eyes but didn’t have time to answer him on account of a gruff voice calling out an even better response to Steven, “Think you can shove it up your ass?”
Rick turned around to see an aged man sitting tall in a wheelchair, a thick flannel shirt worn over his chest. Rick smiled at him, ignoring Steven entirely, “Hey, Mickey, what are you doing here?”
“Well, I was hoping to get some drinks with you, maybe catch up, but after listening to you tell that goddamn story for the hundredth time, I might rethink my offer to spend that much time with you. Don’t you ever get tired of telling it?”
Rick gave him a smirk, people liked to see humor cross each other’s faces, “Nah, sometimes it gets a laugh out of the faculty.”
The old man licked his lips, tweaking a couple of his mustache hairs, “Well not when you tell it wrong. I distinctly remember saying that it hurt like a mother—”
“Mick! Middle school, remember? How about those drinks?” Rick cut his former sergeant off and patted his shoulder, parting the curtain to the exit ramp.
“Right, right, sounds good,” Mick started to roll off the ramp and into the main auditorium.
“Great. Steven, I’ll see you later!” Rick called back to the willowy boy trying to keep up with him and Mickey.
“Mr. Griffin, sir, please, you agreed to meet with some of the kids who have questions, first.”
Rick sighed and Mick halted his wheelchair, “Do any of them have questions?” Rick brought his eyes, slowly, up to meet Steven’s.
Steven took a step to the side, revealing a little boy behind him, “I believe he would like a word. Do you have some questions for Mr. Griffin? I know he’s cranky, but he’s not too scary.” Steven knelt down to the little boy, using a tone of voice that mocked the boy’s age and seemed to say, ‘The closest I’ve come to having children is wandering into the toys section at Target’.
The toe-headed boy didn’t blink, “I’m not afraid of Mr. Griffin. Indeed, I do have a few questions for you, if you wouldn’t mind sharing a moment of your time with me.” He gave Rick a soft smile after his whispering voice trailed off.
Rick cleared his throat and looked back at Mick.
He shrugged, “Drinks aren’t going anywhere. I’ll wait outside while you talk to the kid.”
Rick leaned up against the stage and crossed his arms, waiting for the boy to speak. Steven lingered by the stage until the boy looked up, addressing him in the same whispery voice as before,
“I have no questions for you, only for Mr. Griffin. I would appreciate it if you could give us a moment.”
Steven was taken aback for a second, wounded by the boy’s emotionless words, and sulked out of the auditorium. Rick felt the tickle of a tiny smile on his face before he returned his attention to the kid.
“You’re a little young to be here at a middle school, don’t you think?”
He folded his hands in front of his crisp, pale jeans, “I skipped a grade. I’m nine, soon to be ten. That’s only a year younger than most of the children, here.”
Rick nodded, “I see.”
The boy continued to stare at Rick as if he were meeting his superhero.
“Can I…answer some questions for you?” Rick tried.
The boy nodded, “I certainly hope you will try. It’s alright if you can’t answer them all, right this second. I understand that you might need some time before you are ready to answer them all.”
Rick frowned, “Alright,” He shifted uncomfortably and glanced towards the back door, “Well, I don’t have much time now, I have someone else waiting for me, but I’ll do my best right this second.”
The boy smiled like he knew something Rick didn’t, “If you say so, Mr. Griffin. I was hoping to talk to you about your daughter.”
Rick sucked in a breath and leaned back, pressing his spine into the stage, “I, uh, I didn’t mention having any children in my speech.”
“I know you didn’t,” the boy blinked.
“I don’t have any children, you have the wrong guy, I’m afraid.”
“No, you’re the right man. You had a daughter. Her name was Grace, correct?”
Rick rubbed his chin, shifting his weight to both of his feet now, “Alright, kid, I’m not sure if this is some kind of joke, or who you even are, but I’m telling you that you have the wrong guy. Now, if you have questions about what happened that day, I’ll try to answer them.”
“Grace has a question for you,” the boy craned his neck upwards.
Rick found himself nervous as the boy’s gaze settled on him, “Kid, this isn’t funny. Just go back to class, okay? I’m sure someone’s—”
“William! William, honey, there you are!” a breathless woman jogged down the ramp inside the auditorium. She swiped her dirty blonde hair aside and shot Rick a young smile, “Sorry about him. He tends to wander off at times. Are you a teacher here?”
Rick felt William’s unwavering eyes on him as he shifted his attention to the woman in front of him, “No. No, I was just a guest speaker for the day.”
Her eyes widened, “Oh, you’re the 9/11 speaker. Wow, William has been talking about you for the past week.”
Rick arched his eyebrows, “Really?”
The woman nodded, “Yes, he has. He’s quite…” she hesitated slightly, “…fascinated with anything having to do with September 11th.”
“He’s your son?” Rick ventured.
“Yes. We were touring the school today, to see about enrolling him here next year.”
Rick cocked his head at the boy, expecting him to look guilty, his lie having been foiled, but he held the same airy expression on his face, “Next year? Well, isn’t that interesting? He said he attended here already.”
“Sorry about that, he has a…broad imagination.”
Her words sounded rehearsed as she looked to William, “Alright, William, we have to go now. Let’s leave this man to his afternoon.”
>
“I haven’t talked to him about Grace yet.”
The mother nodded, “Right, honey, he needs to go. I’m sure he has places to be.” She started to tug the boy away and he turned his cheek towards Rick one last time.
“I’ll see you later, Mr. Griffin. I told you that you might need some time.”
Chapter Two
“Did you recognize him?” Mick asked, twirling the bottle’s neck in between his fingers.
Rick took a long pull from his own beer, “No, I had no idea who he was.”
“How about his mom? You know her? Was she hot?”
Rick glared at him, “No, I didn’t know her, and she looked young, probably at least ten years younger than me. I didn’t exactly take too much time to consider her looks.”
“And this kid knew about Grace?”
Rick nodded, “He said that she had a question for me.”
“Sheesh, a little Haley Joel, don’t you think?”
Rick rubbed his eyes again and drained his beer, “Look, didn’t you say you wanted to catch up, or something? Talking about…that isn’t exactly catching up.”
Rick waved a hand over his empty beer, drawing the bartender’s attention to their booth. She nodded, understanding his gesture.
“It’s barely three, Rick, take it easy, will ya?”
The bartender planted a second bottle in front of Rick, and he started to raise it to his lips when Mick lunged forward, almost rising out of his chair, and snatched it out of his hand.
“Mick!” Rick yelled.
“Put the damn drink down and look at me, Rick,” Mickey ordered, “It’s been ten years. I thought you’d have, I don’t know, grown out of this.”
“You don’t grow out of grief, Mickey,” Rick snapped, more concentrated on the beer in Mick’s hand than on the words being exchanged between the two of them.
“Alright, I didn’t dial Dr. Oz, so don’t give me any of that crap. You and I both know that you’re better than this. This drinking all day, doing nothing but going around talking to a bunch of middle school kids. That’s not you, Rick.”