That Crazy Reality Show

by Natasha Kent

  Monday night we had dinner in our room and sat out on the terrace again.

  “I’m glad that y’all had to come up here to sing,” he said.

  “Me too. I’m glad you came up here with me.”

  “Wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  I have no idea how long we sat there looking at the city. I just remember Matt nudging me and we headed in to go to bed. It had been a long weekend and I was really zonked. I slept like a baby….

  Until I heard my phone ring. Not the hotel phone, but my cell. I opened my eyes and looked at the clock. 8:40. Oye. I stretched and yawned and reached for the phone but it stopped ringing. A minute later it started ringing again. Caller I.D., it was Matt.

  I smiled into the phone. “Where are you, you dope?”

  “I’m on the…top of the world lookin’…down on creation…” he responded, singing the song by the Carpenters. I got out of bed and headed out onto the terrace.

  “You goof. Seriously, where are you?” I asked.

  “Num-nuts, I just told you. Well, not quite. Do you want to have breakfast this morning?”

  “Well, yeah,” I said. “Where?”

  “Windows On The World. It’s in the twin towers.”

  “Hey, cool! Which one,” I started to ask him but was suddenly drowned out by the sound of a jet. I remember thinking, ‘Shit, they’re flying low today.’ I looked up and saw the first plane as it careened over the city. “Goddamn!” I hollered.

  “OH MY GOD MIKE!!!!!” I heard him screaming into the phone.

  I watched it and looking back it seemed to be flying in slow motion. To my horror it was heading towards the towers. “Oh my God!” I gasped. An instant later it crashed into the building. “NOOOOO! MATTTT!!!!” I screamed as the fireball blew out of the hole that the plane had made. “NOOOOO!!!!” I screamed again. I stood there in stunned horror as the smoke started billowing out of the building. My legs became jelly and I sank down to my knees.

  I must have stared for what seemed like an eternity. I was too shocked to even cry. God, please don’t let that be the tower he was in, I thought. Horrified, I stood up and ran to the room to get dressed. On the way in I tripped over a chair and dropped my cell phone. It clattered across the terrace. I picked it up. Luckily it was still receiving a signal. Thank God. I ran in to get dressed. The Trade Center was only about ten blocks away and I knew I could get there quickly.

  The elevator seemed to take eons getting up to the top floor. When the doors finally opened I jumped in and smashed all of the buttons. They closed and I felt the cab gliding downwards. Once it got to the lobby I ran through it and out the main doors. I thought I heard someone say ‘Mr. Martin,’ but I ignored it and stumbled down the stairs, falling onto one knee. Fuck! I picked myself up and flung myself forward and into the street. My knee was killing me as I ran as quick as I could to West Broadway.

  Please don’t let him be in that tower, I prayed.

  I was about four blocks away and all you could hear was sirens. Police sirens. Firetrucks. Ambulance sirens. All around people were either running away or to the Center. A lot of people were standing there shocked. My fucking knee! I ignored the pain as much as I could but it slowed me down a little bit. You could see the flames over eight hundred feet up. The sight was horribly awesome and I slowed down a bit.

  I heard my phone ringing. Looked down. “Matt!!!” I answered. But there was no reply. Fuck! I gripped the phone with both hands and shook it. Hard. “God dammit, God dammit!!!” In my panic it finally dawned on me to call him back. I dialed but it went straight to voice mail. Okay, stop Martin. Calm down. He’s probably calling you and you’re blocking his call by trying to call him.

  I breathed deep for a second or two. Dialed him again. Voice mail. Fucking voice mail. I took off south again. As I was running towards the Center traffic at this point was not even moving. Too many people stopped in the streets watching. You could see the firemen from this distance running into the building. I neared the plaza, still looking up, and stopped dead in my tracks. In the distance you could see a dot getting closer that was quickly taking the shape of an airplane. It was heading in fast and people in the streets and looking out of windows nearby began hollering.

  My phone rang again. “MATT!” I heard clicking and static as the plane got closer and closer.

  “Mike! Mike! I’m—“ BLAMM!!!! The airplane flew right into the other tower near a corner of the building, and the blast carried through the other face of the structure. I stood there with my mouth wide open, phone next to my ear. People around me were screaming and backing away from some of the debris that had been blown away from the building.

  There was no sound on the phone. “Matt?” I said, my voice wavering. “Matt, are you there!” I started sniffing uncontrollably as the tears flowed. “MATT!! MATT ANSWER ME!!!” A few people watched me as I stood there screaming into the phone, looking up at the twin towers, crying almost hysterically.

  I dropped to my knees and sat on my heels with my face in my hands. A stranger slowly walked up to me and put her arm around my shoulder. She was crying too. I sobbed and shook like a baby in her arms. As I did my phone slipped from my hands and hit the ground. She picked it up and handed it back to me. I looked at it—it was blank. I tried turning it on. Nothing. In a rage I screamed out and threw it against the building next to me, shattering it.

  I kept on crying, keening actually. My insides hurt. I couldn’t breathe. I felt like the bottom had dropped out in my life. I didn’t want my life anymore.

  I knew Matt wasn’t going to be calling me.

  To this day I have no idea who the woman was who stood by me, holding me, on that street. “Baby, it’s gonna be alright. You just hush now.” I know she was trying to be comforting but I tuned her out, looking up at the burning buildings. I don’t know how long I stood there watching when I spotted something falling from the floors above where the planes had crashed.

  “Oh. My. God.” I whispered. She looked up to see what I was watching and her hand flew to her mouth.

  We were seeing people falling.

  Can you imagine the horror of making that decision?

  I think that my mind sort of shut down at that point. I took my eyes away but my feet were rooted to the sidewalk. I couldn’t move. I’m not sure if I really wanted to move and I have no idea how long I stood there. At that moment I wanted to be with Matt. I’d rather be in the building with him then out here.

  What got my attentionfinally was a low rumbling in my chest. I looked around puzzled and then back to the buildings. That’s odd, I thought. My mind was playing tricks on me. Then suddenly I realized, along with the people around me, what was happening.

  The second tower to be struck was beginning to collapse.

  Sheer, basic instinct took over my body and I turned and ran. I ran as fast as I fuckin’ could back toward my hotel. My knee was killing me and it slowed me down a bit, but not too much. People all around me were screaming and running in the same direction. The sound was absolutely tremendous. Living in the south I’d heard a tornado roaring through my neighborhood. But this sound was unbelievable. It sounded like a thousand freight trains colliding at once.

  I had run about five blocks when the dust cloud hit me. I turned at the first cross street I came to and ran in that direction.

  It didn’t matter.

  At the block ahead of me I saw the dust cloud billowing around the corner and heading in my direction. A bunch of us were trapped and before we knew it, it was like a brown-out, or a dark gray fog.

  I couldn’t see a fuckin’ thing and I was having a hard time breathing. I held the bottom of my shirt up to my mouth. All I could hear was the sound of thunder echoing around and through the canyons of buildings that make up Manhattan. My eyes were burning and I kept having to blink and squeeze them shut. I could vaguely make out a shop or storefront of some sort and ran in that direction. I never saw the fire hydrant. I smashed my hurt knee into it and the momentum
from my running spun me around. I lost my footing and was rolling across the sidewalk.

  The last thing that I saw before the whole world went black was the wall of a building.

  * * * *

  I came to and thought that I had woken up in hell. You could barely see a goddamn thing and it was like a dust storm. The air was brown and orange and there was dust and dirt everywhere. Two men had apparently picked me up, each one taking an arm across their shoulder, and ran with me. Later I found out that I had rolled into a building where an exclusive men’s clothier was housed, and two of the patrons came out to help me.

  My head was bouncing on my shoulders and it throbbed like a mother fucker. I tried to help run but I couldn’t. I passed out again.

  * * * *

  When I came to, the three of us were nearing a hospital, and then I heard the sound again. That low rumbling again. The guys stopped and we turned to look in the direction of the towers but had a hard time seeing anything because of the dust cloud. You could make out the top of the first tower that was struck as it started to drop. “Oh God,” I muttered and passed out again.

  * * * *

  I woke up some time later in a hospital bed, an i.v. in my arm and my head wrapped up in gauze. People were running everywhere. Nurses. Doctors. Interns. Security people. The whole place was a mass of controlled confusion.

  My head hurt.

  I closed my eyes and drifted off to sleep again.

  * * * *

  I woke up again later calling Matt’s name. I remember a couple of nurses and maybe an intern or a resident coming into the room I was in. One of the nurses put a syringe into my i.v. and I drifted off to sleep again.

  * * * *

  “Martin….”

  Matt sounded so far away. I had to get to him. I tried so hard to open my eyes. Finally I did. I was in a hospital.

  “Mr. Martin.” I looked over to the voice. A man was standing there gently shaking my arm. “Now we’re talking,” he said with a slight smile. “Come on Mike, wake up.”

  The fog slowly lifted from my head. Very slowly.

  “Where am I,” I groaned.

  “You’re at Saint Vincent’s. I’m Dr. Sheffield. You banged your head pretty well, sir.”

  I weakly nodded.

  “You have a slight concussion.”

  “Head hurts,” I mumbled.

  “Yes. We can give you something for the pain.”

  Anything he said after that was just muttering. I was miserable, emotionally. I didn’t care about a fuckin’ headache.

  “When can I leave?”

  He looked at me a second. “You should probably stay the night.”

  I shook my head. “No. I need to leave.”

  “You’re sure you want to do that sir?” he asked.

  I looked him dead in the eye. “I have to get out of here.”

  He slowly nodded. “Okay. I’ll have the discharge papers in a bit. In the meantime, here’s a prescription for that head. I’d suggest that you not do any flying soon but you couldn’t do that anyway.”

  “Why not? What’s happening out there?”

  “It’s looking like terrorists have hijacked four planes. Two of them were flown into the World Trade Center, one flew into the Pentagon and the last one crashed somewhere in Pennsylvania. The FAA has closed all airports until further notice.”

  I was stunned and my mouth dropped open. Matt was dead because some bunch of fuckin’ crazies hated this country….I couldn’t even think.

  “Um. I lost someone in the towers...” My voice stalled out. “How…what do I do?”

  His face dropped a bit. “At this point nobody really knows. The Port Authority and Giuliani are trying to assess…” and I shut him out.

  About an hour later a nurse came in to remove the i.v. “Your discharge papers have been signed. You’re free to go, Mr. Martin.”

  Free.

  Martin.

  Free from what, I thought. I wasn’t free from misery. I wasn’t free from loneliness. My soul felt empty. It was like someone had taken vacuum and sucked out my insides. I had that constant feeling of a lump in my throat. You remember when you were a kid and your mom or dad yelled at you about something, then right before you started crying you felt a huge lump that hurt at the back of your throat? That’s how I felt the rest of that God awful day.

  As I limped out of the hospital I found out where to go to try and find…remains. Christ. This was all happening so fast. Remains, for cryin’ out loud. I had just watched my partner die. Along with thousands of other people.

  I was a complete basket case as I wandered around the streets of Lower Manhattan trying to find the place to register Matt’s name. The area was like a war zone. My head hurt so I sat down on a street corner. A stranger walked up to me.

  “Are you…okay?” he asked, putting his hand on my shoulder. It’s amazing, you always think of New Yorkers as short tempered and impatient, with no time for anyone else.

  Not on that day.

  My mouth turned down like I was about to cry. “I’m trying to find where you can register…the names….” I couldn’t finish my sentence.

  “Hey, c’mere pal. Follow Lou.”

  I looked up to see who Lou was. He was this great big burly guy, older, probably in his late fifties, dressed in construction-type clothes. My instant thought was ‘grandpa.’ He helped me off the curb and walked me the five blocks to the place I was looking for.

  When I got there I turned and looked at him. “Thanks, Lou,” I said. And then I lost it. I started crying again, which didn’t really help the pain in my head. Lou held me as I cried. This complete stranger held me as I grieved. I clapped him on the back and thanked him again.

  As I turned to go into the building he asked, “You gonna be okay?”

  “No. I doubt it.”

  * * * *

  Once I registered Matt’s name I left and headed north. I needed to get out of there. I couldn’t take it anymore. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t fly; who knows how long the airports would be shut down. Hell at this point all I wanted to do was get out of the city. They weren’t gonna find Matt. It was a lost cause. I felt horrible because I felt I had given up on him. At one point I was pissed a little bit at him. Why in the hell would he leave me and go into the World Trade Center without me? It didn’t make sense. But then again, nothing at that time did. I had to leave New York City. And I had to do it, alone.

  * * * *

  Since air travel was out of the question I tried going to the train station. I was able to buy a ticket but I couldn’t leave until Thursday morning. I had actually checked the buses, but it was a longer wait.

  On Wednesday I distracted myself by volunteering near Ground Zero with a group that was preparing food, sandwiches, drinks, whatever for the people helping out with the rescue efforts. I felt that if I was near as I could be to Matt I might feel better. I didn’t feel better, just distracted. My God, the horror of everything. I remembered seeing people falling to their deaths; firemen going into the towers as people from the buildings filed out. Every time I saw a fireman I got choked up.

  Thursday couldn’t come quick enough. I was still such a head case that I had forgotten that I didn’t have a cell phone any longer. I didn’t think of things like that.

  Wednesday night I went to our hotel and packed all of our bags. Every time I picked up an article of Matt’s clothing I held it to my nose, trying hard to smell what I could.

  It was agony.

  Thursday morning the bell captain got our luggage. I was the only one checking out. As I signed the credit card receipt the man at the desk was saying something. I don’t know what. I looked at him blankly. I saw his mouth moving but no words were coming out.

  The hotel shuttle took me to Grand Central. Any other time I would have been awestruck by such monumental architecture.

  Today it was my gateway to home.

  Alone.

  I had gotten a room on the train. I needed to be alone.
I probably shouldn’t have been alone with the state my mind was in, but I needed to be away from people. I sat there staring out the window as the world slipped away. I couldn’t cry anymore. My head was hurting a little bit. I took the bandage off. I remember thinking how stupid it was to have on one in the first place. Just like years before when Matt....

  I took a look at the bottle of pain killers in my hand. I thought, it would be so easy right now to down this whole bottle and just go to sleep. But then I knew when I got to heaven Matt would kick my ass. I had to smile at that. I took the prescribed amount and laid my head back to rest. When I woke up the train had stopped for it’s layover in Washington D.C. I had to wait there six hours before it left to go to Atlanta. I wished Matt was there. I thought about calling the place where I’d registered his name but remembered I didn’t have a phone. It was smashed to bits.