Agnes was busy pulling chairs in front of CNN, to make sure everybody had a front row seat. She was like every other social x-ray in her early forties; pinched, and so thin that the skin on her face sagged like a loose mask. It occurred to me that one day I’d look just like her. But maybe not. Maybe I’d die here.
On the television, most people were still running, but a few blocks away, on Wall Street, a few stopped to smoke cigarettes by the patio in front of Chase Bank. Bits of paper landed at their feet. For the first time in their lives, maybe, they were quiet and without purpose.
What were they doing, sitting so close? Didn’t they realize that the tower could fall? It hit me then. Really hit me.
“I’m the fire warden. I’m in charge! Everybody out!” I shouted.
Chapter 5
Even Love Burns
“Did you hear me? Everybody out!”
Agnes turned red. “Shut up!” she screamed. “Just shut up before you get somebody killed!”
I took a deep breath, and got ready to scream back. “Everybody follow—“
Brian Morningstar squeezed his fingers around my left upper arm. “Follow me!” I shouted while he clamped down tight enough to bruise. I yanked back, and dashed for the elevator.
“You stupid bitch!” Agnes screamed. “Nobody follow her!”
Just then, through the glass-doored lobby, an elevator’s mouth opened. A man stepped out. He’d never been to my office before, so I didn’t recognize him. Nice blue suit and worried face, like all the rest. He pushed his way through the doors and into reception. He headed straight for me. Good looking, rounded features, tanned, Mediterranean skin. Unlike the rest of us, he walked with a purpose. Brian stepped aside, and both this man’s hands were on my shoulders before I knew for sure that it was Cole.
“You,” he said. He was sweating, like he’d run from the Starbucks Kiosk and into the elevator lobby while Port Authority cops had chased him.
I said what I should have told him at that country club two years ago. “You and me. Let’s get out of this.”
Things had been slow, but now they went fast. We ran for the elevator. Brian Morningstar returned to his position against the door. Cole gave Morningstar a half second before pounding him in the chest with a closed fist, then kicking him aside. I bid farewell to my career, and we ran past the glass doors and hailed the elevator along with the people who’d followed us, and some of the others in the elevator suite, who’d taken the back way.
Before we could board, it happened again. The floor slid under my feet. We tumbled. The sound roared. Hot air blasted through the ducts and raised my hair like static.
Cole got up, then me. The building swayed, far worse than before. I was sure it would snap in two. He pulled me toward the elevator but I stopped him. “Fire precaution. It’s not running anymore.”
We circled back through the lobby and toward the emergency stairs, holding hands as the building continued to sway. People had scattered. CNN played to empty chairs. A chain of people hung outside the opposite building. Men and women alike. They held each other’s feet and arms, and as I watched, some dropped. I was glad for the smoke. I didn’t have to know for sure.
We got to the back stairway. This time everyone was heading up to the roof, even Agnes and Morningstar. I started to follow them, but Cole shook his head. “Down.”
“What if it hit the middle of the building? We’ll burn alive,” I said.
“Better than jumping. They’re not going to have time to land a chopper.”
“That’s nuts,” I said. “If the fire goes out, they can rescue us from the roof.”
He shook his head. “But it won’t go out. Not in time, anyway.”
We stood on the platform. People pushed passed us, heading up. “If the fire didn’t get to the stairwell, we might make it. Trust me on this, I know explosions,” he said.
“But it was a plane that crashed into the building, wasn’t it?” I asked.
He shrugged. “I don’t know.”
I swallowed to keep my chest from heaving. He was out of his mind. No way we’d survive, climbing down through the impact. Even from up here on the 104th floor, I could feel the heat.
“Okay,” I said, and we headed down.
The first few flights, Cole led the way. It got hotter and hotter. After ten floors (Or more? Twenty?) my jewelry got hot. I pulled off my canary yellow diamond earrings. Tore off my necklace, too. Rubies. Didn’t bother carrying them in my hands, just tossed them behind. My ring I kept, even as the platinum singed my finger.
The stairway emptied as the people ahead of us gave up. Wind rushed from above, toward the heart of the building like a vacuum. It pulled us closer to the fire. Cole’s breathing was ragged and wet. I watched as his hair singed and turned to ashes. I suppose mine did, too.
The smoke thickened. I don’t know why we kept going. Our hands tightly clasped, maybe we just knew that stopping meant giving up. He wheezed as he navigated us through fallen, occasionally still-coughing bodies. An arm, a torso. Something soft and slippery, that maybe was Eva’s lovely brown hair. It moaned, and I knew we should bend down, and try to carry it. We kept going.
Cole ripped the pockets from his three thousand dollar suit and handed me one, then held the other over his mouth. We stumbled as we walked, slower and slower. I could tell that he was running the possibilities through his mind. If I fainted, how would he carry me? If the fire had gotten into the stairwell, would we race through? Would he cover me with his body to protect me from the flames? Yes, I realized. He would.
I knew then that nobody mattered, except Cole. I loved him. I’d die for him. I’d happily sell my soul for this man, and in fact already had.
By the eightieth floor, Cole’s wheezing had turned to coughing. I was leading him. The fire had reached the stairwell, and beneath us was a gaping, burning wound. The wind fueled the flames. All I could see was black, and red, and in the center of it all, intense blue fire. The metal stairway railing was too hot to touch, and the ring had singed open my skin, but was so hot that it cauterized as it burned, and there was no blood.
I stopped; he pushed me ahead. “Through,” he mouthed, because he could not swallow enough breath to speak. “Out!”
We’d die if we jumped. We both knew that. But it was better, I think, than standing still.
I put my hand on the center of his chest, felt his thrumping heart. From the other side of the inferno, I saw those same four riders, veiled in shadow. They were solemn, and wore expressionless faces. Wraiths, maybe.
“Come on,” Cole wheezed.
“Come on!” the riders ordered, their voices an impatient chorus. The one in front was more formed than the rest. Her hair wasn’t just red, but on fire.
I took Cole’s hand and we jumped. The women disappeared. We landed eight floors down, in the same stairwell. Something cracked. Cole wasn’t moving. I’d feel the pain later, for now there was only adrenaline. I picked him up, with a strength that didn’t seem possible, slung him over my shoulder, and broke into a run.
More bodies. A plane seat, half charred so that I could see its metal bones. I didn’t have time to step carefully. Things crunched. Cole got heavier. Down down down. I was tempted to drag him, but the stairs were so hot they’d burn his skin. Another dozen flights, and the temperate eased below boiling. His body wasn’t moving.
By then, I could smell something cooking. My cheap poly shirt and suit skirt had melted to my skin.
It must have been about the fortieth floor that the firemen came charging past. One of them tried to help me carry Cole. But his ungainly suit slowed him down, so I signaled for him to go on ahead, and broke into a run.
“Come on,” I whispered to Cole, my voice so rasping it was inaudible. “Come on, come on, come on.” His skin wasn’t bleeding, but bright red. I imagined a road not yet drawn, and all the things we should have done, and wished I’d known him when we were kids.
Down the stairs. The heat chased us. I didn’t
feel it. Down, down, down. Until I was out. Racing down the highway, holding Cole, a light husk who had died eighty floors ago, in my arms.
And then black. Everything went black.
Chapter 6
The Angel Visits
Something grinding, like rubbing a wet balloon. I thought maybe it was the ants in gray suits, clogging the tunnels connecting the trade center, spitting their bile.
The towers were burning. The elevators and lobby, too. The whole world, an orb aglow. I held my love’s husk in my arms. Because of what I’d done, because I’d survived, the four riders slouched back into darkness, waiting to be born. They left me to the fire, all alone. And then, from my arms, Cole spoke. “It happened for a reason,” he said as his body turned to dust. “Unmask.”
Something warm in my arm. Or no, in my blood. It traveled to my shoulder, then my chest. It heated my heart like a first drink, when you still think the whole night will feel this good, so teeming with delights undiscovered. To my left, a woman in white. An angel. “Thank you,” I said. My voice was a dry exhalation.
Later (hours? days?), the angel returned. The entire organ of my skin was a scab dipped in rubbing alcohol. Stinging and relentless. I was crying from the pain, even before I woke up.
“Where is he? Who took him? Did you take him?” I asked the woman in white, not the same angel as before, I now realized. She jabbed shining metal into the crook of my arm. I didn’t feel the pinch. Only spreading numbness, like an inch-by-inch amputation.
Later (days? weeks?) I woke again, and this time stayed quiet. My skin was a coat of red ants, stinging and biting. Crawling, too. My pain was alive.
To my left, a white curtain. The only furniture was an IV tree. Its hollow wire pierced my upper arm, which I now noticed was charred—some areas black, some pink and oozing. I was too weak to pull back the sheets, but the parts of my body I was able to see; my arms, chest, and shoulders, were covered in bandages through which yellowish fluid oozed. It wasn’t until I figured out where that rotting smell was coming from that I screamed, and the nice nurse, whose nametag read “Cathi” with an “i,” shot my IV full of more morphine.
Chapter 7
Do You Feel Anything at All?
“You think you’re still on fire, but you’re not. It’s your brain, firing off impulses, and creating phantom pains. Physiologically, those nerves are dead. Really, by now you shouldn’t be hurting at all,” the man in the white jacket told me. He was standing at the side of my bed, bending forward and talking over me, because it hurt too much to crane my neck—the skin there tore when I moved.
My mother was next to him. Graying brown hair and washed-out blue eyes. Over the years, her middle had thickened, and she’d begun to look like someone’s grandmother. This was the first time I’d seen her since…. A fire. Yes, a fire. And where was Cole?
“Are you sure you hurt as much as you think?” he asked. I read his nametag upside-down, then right-side up:
Dr. Rossoff
Memorial-Sloane Kettering Hospital.
“I asked, do you really hurt, or maybe it’s more that you’re frightened?”
“Everything burns,” I croaked. I could feel the blood in my throat as the effort of speaking tore my skin.
He shook his head. My mother bit her lip and closed her eyes, then opened them again, and smiled cheerfully at me through her tears. She waved; the tips of her chipped, pink-painted fingernails flicked up and down. Always so eager to please. A schmuck. Even now, when I needed her most, no help at all.
“Are you cold?” he asked. “In these cases, patients are usually cold, but they don’t burn. Your nerves are gone. You should be numb.” His eyes were narrowed, like I was a scientific mystery he was trying to unlock.
I shook my head, having lost the knowledge of words. I could feel the tear sliding down the far corner of my eye, and pooling against the crisp, white sheet at my temple.
“She told you it burns, aren’t you listening?” my mother asked. Her voice was without eagerness or affectation. Flat. “Get her the Goddamned morphine or my husband will sue your ass off.”
He started as if someone had splashed him with cold water, cleared his throat, then injected my IV bag.
In seconds, the coolness of the drug got under my skin, and mixed with my blood, where it warmed, and traveled. I let go of a long breath I hadn’t realized I was holding.
“Where’s Cole?” I asked, because the morphine reminded me of being drunk.
Out of the corner of my eye, my mother shook her head, and as I dozed, I cried.
Chapter 8
Another Lie
The days bled by. At first, I asked after Cole every time I was awake because I hoped I’d misremembered. Eventually, I asked after him because I thought it would be disloyal not to. They never found his body, which surprised me, because I can’t imagine I’d let go of it.
September became October. I watched the television bolted to the corner with glazed eyes. Dramedys, comedies, late-night re-runs, even the news. For a while, I was a regular story: Brigid Murphy, the 9-11 miracle. Sam Donaldson described me as a champion of the American Spirit, while an EPA rep told the News Hour I was a crank, and had never been inside the towers to begin with. I was the only person to have escaped WTC2 from above impact, and no scientist could explain how I’d managed to traverse the heat, smoke, and fire, still breathing.
Fox News informed me that my injuries were bad. Likely terminal. 90% of my body was burned, and I’d inhaled so much debris that the on-staff pulmonologists had lavaged my lungs with saline twice. They’d cleaned out the ashes, but they still hadn’t dislodged the tiny fiberglass shards cutting into my air sacs, which explained why I kept coughing blood.
Occasionally, the networks filmed my parent’s house on Long Island. For the first time, I realized that it was pretty. A split level ranch with a well-manicured lawn. It was their second on the same plot. The first, a six-bedroom tudor they’d inherited from my grandfather, burned down when I was a kid. I’d always felt they’d made a poor choice, replacing the old husk with something so much smaller, but now I decided I’d been wrong.
My parents agreed to only one interview, with Katie Couric. They’d leaned inside their front doorway, arms folded. Neither had been able to look the camera in the eye. “We pray for her, and hope you’ll keep her in your prayers, too,” my mother said with a tearful grin. “She’s nails tough,” my dad told the cameras while picking at the scab on his cheek where a pre-cancerous mole had recently been removed. It bled, and he mopped it with the heel of his sleeve and kept talking. “We’re not even worried.” One of the rivets had come loose on the chipped brass knocker behind them. A lopsided lion with a dull, worn mane. It had rocked distractingly beside them.
Pretty soon, my Born Again little sister, who lived on a boat docked out in Amityville, and kept her cabin stocked with canned goods in preparation for the impending apocalypse, got into the act: “This is what happens when we let blasphemers and adulterers run our country. Our weakest women become vulnerable, and barbarians destroy all in us that is good.”
My older brother, a court officer in Seattle, wired a dozen roses and on the card, in tiny print, wrote, “Don’t let the turkeys get you down. There’s a reason they’re funny animals. Love you, Jimmy.”
On October 11, New York had a silent moment of prayer for me. I probably should have been touched, but mostly, it was too much attention. Like I was holding up the spirit of New York City by not being dead. Also, my nurse was late with the morphine.
As soon as non-family members were permitted, Cole’s mother Natalie requested a visit. My room, I’d by then learned, was a plastic bubble. Without skin, the body can’t fight infection. Every guest, nurse, orderly, and doctor was sterilized before they entered.
Natalie arrived promptly at three, almost to the second. The end credits for “One Life to Live” had just started to roll.
I heard her before I saw her. My neck still hurt too much to twist,
and my head was propped on three pillows, facing forward, with a view of the television. “So you’re the girl,” a woman’s deep bass voice announced, while on the television, ambulance sirens wailed, and all the young doctors in love mugged for the camera. They were so very pretty.
“Hi,” I croaked.
“Hi.” I felt her come closer. The skin I still had was so sensitive to changes in temperature that I could feel the displacement of air as she walked. Soon, she was standing over me. Dark skin and black freckles, her gray hair cropped short. “Oh,” she said, which was what everybody said the first time they saw me in all my bandaged glory. “That can’t be good.”
She didn’t sound French. I tried to invent something cheerful—weren’t daughter-in-laws supposed to be cheerful? “They don’t know why I’m not dead,” I whispered.
“I don’t either,” she said, then took a seat on the bed, so I could see her more clearly. She was wearing a frumpy blue velour sweat suit - the kind that said “Juicy” on the ass, and she smelled like bleach. She had a working man’s hands.
I lifted my neck, even though it forced my skin open.
“Easy,” she said. She was much older than I’d expected. In her early seventies, maybe. Deep wrinkles lined her under eyes and the corners of her mouth.
“You’re Cole’s mom?” I croaked.
She sighed. “He didn’t tell you he’s black.”
“No. He told me. But I thought you were French. You live in Paris.”
She shook her head. “No. Jersey.” Then she clucked, a nervous, hurt sound. “I took him to Paris once, when he was five. Haven’t been back since. He liked the crepes, the little snot.”
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