On the Way Back

by Fox, Ella

  When President Bush came up on the screen, I stopped pacing and listened.

  “Today, we've had a national tragedy. Two airplanes have crashed into the World Trade Center in an apparent terrorist attack on our country.”

  Those two words pulled me up short. Fuck. Fuck. My wife was right at the heart of a terrorist attack. I was still trying to wrap my head around that when the room phone rang. Hurrying over to the couch, I picked it up.

  “Hello?”

  “Did you see the president just say what happened was a terrorist attack?” Alan asked.

  “I did, and I’m pretty sure I’m about to lose my fucking mind. What do we do?”

  I didn’t hear his answer because the bottom of the screen on CNN changed to reflect new breaking news. My breath caught, my stomach dropping like a stone when I read what it said.

  “Holy shit, they’re saying the Pentagon is on fire. What the fuck is going on?”

  I felt ready to come out of my skin. Looking at the clock on the TV I saw that it was just nine forty in the morning. Jesus—how had so much happened in just twenty-five short minutes?

  “Don’t believe that just yet,” Alan said. “There’s always reports around traumatic events that later turn out to be false.”

  No sooner did he say it than the CNN reporter at the Pentagon was saying that there were plumes of smoke coming from the building and everyone was being evacuated. He wasn’t even finished explaining the situation before the anchor interrupted him to say that the White House was being evacuated.

  For a few minutes, Alan and I didn’t speak to each other because we were listening to the news. I could hear Goldie was very upset and trying to hold her shit together, and I felt bad that my uncle was trying to calm both of us.

  When they said there were reports that a plane had crashed into the Pentagon I felt ill. And then, the bottom dropped out beneath me again.

  “All air traffic has been grounded around the country,” the anchor said.

  “Fuck, Alan,” I breathed. “I have to get to New York now. This isn’t good.”

  “We’re going to figure this out,” he promised. “Give me twenty minutes—Goldie and I are coming over.”

  I hung up in a daze. As fucked up as I was in the head, the one thing I knew to do was to keep dialing Shaelyn. My eyes were glued to the television as I watched them alternate between footage of the World Trade Center fires and The Pentagon fire. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to see that the fires in all three buildings were catastrophic.

  The Pentagon reporter was in the middle of talking when the anchor in New York cut him off. “There’s just been a huge explosion… I can’t see that second tower. It looks almost like a mushroom cloud.”

  I’d been standing, but the picture on the screen was so horrific that I had to sit. Whatever had happened, the smoke cloud from whatever explosion just went off was bigger than anything I’d ever seen.

  The world was falling apart and I had no idea whether my wife was safe. The fear I experienced was so overwhelming that it took everything I had in me not to collapse.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Shaelyn— September 2001

  The sheer amount of debris and paper on the ground as we made our way down a side street was staggering. That it was so spread out spoke to the force of impact, and to be honest the visual freaked me out.

  I was surprised to see that there were many people standing and staring up at the buildings, making no attempt to put more space between themselves and the burning buildings. Who had time to stand around gaping when another plane could fly into another building at any moment? It had already happened twice—who was to say a third plane wasn’t coming? All around us, chaos ensued, sirens blaring as first responders raced toward the scene. The noise was damn near deafening.

  “We have to get the fuck out of the city!” someone yelled.

  “Head to Battery Park,” another voice yelled back.

  That suggestion made sense to me because it meant we’d be at the New York Harbor. With the smoke and debris around us, heading toward water seemed like the best idea. “Let’s do that,” I huffed to Tia, my breath coming in gusts as we power walked.

  A trip that would normally have taken just a few minutes took double that due to the amount of people trying to escape. By the time we reached the park, we were out of steam and I’d never been thirstier in my life. The second we’d come out of the hotel my mouth had started to taste gross, like I’d been standing over melting rubber or something. We were lucky that Tia had a bottle of water, some chewing gum, and a tee shirt in her backpack. I’d never been so happy to take a drink and put a stick of gum in my mouth. After we drank, we ripped at the tee to create two covers for our faces from the nose down. When we were finished, we handed the remains of the shirt to a woman who’d been cupping her hand over her mouth and nose to keep from breathing in what hung in the air.

  Once we’d done what we could to protect ourselves, I looked around and took stock of the situation. The good news was that we weren’t the only people who’d gone to Battery Park. There were tons of people already assembled and there was a continuous stream of new arrivals. Everyone was shell-shocked, disoriented, and unsure of what to do next.

  Aside from the obvious confusion, the thing we all had in common was that we couldn’t look away from the burning buildings. I was able to force myself to look away only because the need to hear Garrett’s voice was so powerful. Pulling my phone from my pocket, I frowned down at the screen. It was almost nine thirty and he hadn’t called. My fingers shook as I pressed the button that would speed dial his phone. When it came up busy, I tried again, and then again. Each time, I got a fast-sounding busy signal.

  “I think the lines are down,” Tia said.

  Looking up from my phone, I saw her grimace as she snapped her phone shut. With my attention off the screen of my BlackBerry, I heard other people around us grumbling about the fact that they couldn’t get a line out.

  I kept trying to call as we tried to decide what to do next. We wound up huddled with a group made up of some of the guests we’d evacuated from the hotel with, and no one seemed to know exactly what to do. When word spread that some of the boats in the region were willing to evacuate people over to New Jersey, Tia and I stepped aside to talk it out.

  “Should we go or wait to see what happens?” she asked.

  I hated that the answer wasn’t cut and dry. On one hand, staying in New York City seemed risky. On the other, going over to New Jersey without any destination worked out in advance seemed dumb. At the moment up was down and down was up. I’d never imagined that planes would fly into those towers, but they had. Who was to say other things weren’t going to happen? Some of the people in our group were kicking around the idea to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge but that idea scared the hell out of me. What if we were in the middle of the bridge and a plane took it out? What if there were bombs planted in locations where large groups would be sitting ducks? It was hard to convince myself that I was just being paranoid when I was watching the two biggest buildings in the city burn.

  Tia and I agree that we’d wait it out for a while, the idea being that we’d stay in place until we could get through to our families. To that end, we set off toward the closest phone booth. When we got to it the line to use it was easily fifty people deep, not that it mattered since it was obvious from the frantic cursing of the people currently trying to use it that calls weren’t going through.

  Frustrated, Tia and I had no choice but to do what everyone else was doing, which was stay in line in the hopes that at some point the phone would start working. While we waited, we gleaned more information from people who were just arriving.

  “All of the bridges and tunnels in and out of the city are now closed. They’re letting people walk out across the bridges but no cars are allowed.”

  “The president made a statement—he confirmed that this is terrorism.”

  “The Sears Tower is being evacuated.
”

  “The stock exchange shut down.”

  The next thing we heard ramped my anxiety up to another level. “There was an explosion at the Pentagon. That’s confirmed—there was footage on CNN of the fire. The Capital building is being evacuated and there’s a rumor that something on the mall in DC is on fire.”

  I looked at Tia in shock. An incident at the Pentagon meant that what was happening wasn’t confined to New York City. This wasn’t just a terrorist attack on one city—it was an attack on America, and that changed everything.

  “It doesn’t make much sense to evacuate if nowhere is safe,” Tia murmured.

  I didn’t know what to say. One part of me wanted to go, but a memory of my childhood was going through my head on a loop. Back then Goldie had told me that if I ever got separated from her I should stay where she’d last seen me and look for someone in a uniform. Our families knew we were in New York City. They knew what hotel we’d been in, and that was important. On the other hand, maybe if we went to New Jersey we’d be able to get a line out.

  There was a loud rumble, not like the planes had sounded earlier, but big enough to shake the ground. “Holy shit,” someone screamed.

  “Oh my god!”

  Looking back toward the towers, my eyes widened in horror as I realized one of them was dropping down like a pancake. I screamed, but it didn’t really matter since it seemed as if everyone around me was doing the same thing. One horrible thought sent a shiver down my spine. The collapse of that building had likely ended hundreds, maybe even thousands, of lives in less than ten seconds.

  A piece of my heart broke into a thousand tiny pieces as the magnitude of the loss their families would experience watching that building go down hit me. I knew better than most that life wasn’t fair, but this was something else entirely. What I was seeing wasn’t some random event. It was pure, violent, evil, and the people left behind would be forced to bear the scars for the rest of their lives.

  I thought all of that in a matter of seconds, my brain going at light speed. In the wake of the fall, a huge mushroom cloud bloomed. There were screams as people fell to the ground and covered their faces. Tia took my hand in hers and tugged me down until we were both on our knees. It didn’t register that the pavement was digging into my shins because I was wearing shorts. Reaching down into the collar of my shirt, I wrapped my free hand around the necklace I never took off. I held on tight to both my engagement ring and the small urn that held a portion of Melody’s ashes, I said a prayer that I’d get back to Garrett.

  When I finished praying, I looked around me and tried to think about what to do next. The soot was thick. Although it didn’t totally wipe out the sights around me, I wondered about the people who were closer, like the ones who’d been standing and staring up at the buildings. Were they okay? Could they see through this?

  As I looked around and saw how thick the smoke was, something occurred to me. Whatever was in the soot would be toxic. Jet fuel, electrical wires, metal, rubber, and whatever else was mixed in was not meant to be inhaled.

  That more than anything made the decision for me. Turning, I said Tia’s name. When she looked at me, I gestured with my neck to where the line of boats was coming in.

  “We need to get on one of those boats and get as far away from what’s in this air as we possibly can.”

  We got up slowly, both of us shaky. It took a few minutes to get into a line for the boats. We didn’t push or try to get to the front of the lines because that was where the frantic people were. Things were precarious enough without adding a hospital trip to the mix from being taken down in a stampede.

  In the midst of what could only be called hell on earth, a few truths stood out. I loved Garrett Riordan with every fiber of my being, I'd been wrong to push him away, and I wanted to live.

  For almost fourteen months, I’d been alive but not living. With death all around me, I knew I’d been a fool. Life was a gift and I planned to fight with everything I had to get back to the man and the family I loved.

  As we waited for a boat, I had a thought. Although I couldn’t get a call through to Garrett, if I wrote him, eventually it would go through. More than likely, we’d have spoken by then, but I still felt the need to take out my BlackBerry and compose an email.

  Garrett,

  If you get this before we can connect by phone, please tell everyone that I’m okay. Have Goldie call Tia’s mom to tell her that she’s okay, too. (I’ll put the number at the bottom of this email). We’re in Battery Park and we’re going to evacuate on one of the boats they’re using to take people across the Hudson to New Jersey. I’m hoping there will be phone service over there but there’s something I want to say to you and it can’t wait.

  I choose you. I choose life. I choose love—our love— and I’m going to fight my way back to you. And when I get there, you’re going to marry me all over again. No more wasting time.

  You’re everything and I love you more than you will ever know.

  Love your once and future wife,

  Shaelyn

  Chapter Eighteen

  Garrett— September 2001

  By seven fifteen in the morning, Uncle Alan, Goldie, Mom and Dad were all assembled in the living area of the bungalow I was in. I hadn’t known my parents were coming, but I’d never been so happy to see them.

  I was doing my best to keep it together for Goldie because I knew that’s what Shaelyn would want. The two of us sat next to each other on the couch, holding hands as we watched CNN for updates. With my free hand, I continued dialing Shaelyn’s phone, praying that I’d eventually get the goddamn thing to ring. What was the point of having a cell phone if it didn’t work?

  I felt like a caged animal, desperate to get out and run. I wanted to be up in the air and on my way to New York, but the FAA had shut down all American airspace and no one was saying when it would reopen. I didn’t get a good feeling about them lifting it any time soon after the CNN anchor reported that international flights were being diverted to Canada. All I could focus on was that every minute I spent trapped in California was a minute I should be using to shrink the distance between me and my wife.

  I’d just pressed the button to end another failed attempt at calling Shaelyn when my phone played the chime to let me know I had an email in my personal account. Since I got so many emails in a day, I’d created one that only my family knew about so I’d never miss anything important. My entire family was gathered in the room, which meant the only other person who would use that address was my wife.

  My fingers shook as I navigated to that mailbox. When I saw her email address as the sender, the sense of relief was so extreme it made me dizzy. “I got an email from her!” I announced.

  Everyone stopped, all eyes on me as they waited for me to tell them what it said. Goldie sagged with relief, tears of joy sliding down her face as I read the email aloud. She wasn’t alone—we were all crying. I wouldn’t stop until I got to my wife, but knowing that she’d gotten away from the hotel and was evacuating the city gave me a rush of relief unlike any I’d ever experienced.

  Even still, the panic remained. We were all keyed up and antsy from the events of the morning. It was crazy that it’d been less than two hours since it all started. Having my wife on the other side of the country on what had to be the worst day in its history was heartbreaking.

  Goldie copied the number from Shaelyn’s email for Tia’s mom and then left the room— with Alan at her side— to go into the kitchen, call her, and let her know what was happening. My parents stayed in the living room with me, but my attention wasn’t on them since I was busy typing out my response to Shaelyn.

  Baby,

  I got your email! It came through. I’ve never been so fucking happy to get one in my life. There are a million things I’d be saying over and over again if you were here. Mostly I’d be telling you how fucking relieved I am that you got away from that and you’re okay. What we’re seeing on TV is so bad, Shae. All I can think about is
getting to you and I’m kicking myself in the ass for not following you there to begin with. You’re my entire world— without you, all of this means nothing. I should be with you. I’m sorry I’m not but I will be soon.

  The FAA has shut down all air travel, which means I haven’t been able to lock down a flight yet. I can’t imagine it will be closed for more than a few hours— people need to get from point A to point B, and many of those people were already on flights that were diverted to different airports. The second they lift the restrictions, I’ll be on the first plane out. I’m thinking flights will be back up by this afternoon so expect me to be with you by tonight.

  In the meantime, tell Tia that Goldie is already on the phone with her mom. I’m going to call Harry now and start making arrangements for where you and Tia can go on the New Jersey side. Call me the minute you can.

  I love you so much, Shaelyn. There are a million and one things I can’t fucking wait to say and do when I see you later.

  Forever your husband,

  G

  PS: Remember when my dad told us that some day everyone would have a cell phone and we all laughed and said how annoying it would be to carry around? We were way off. I’ve never been happier to be so damn wrong about something in my life.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Shaelyn— September 2001

  It was about twenty minutes after ten when the Staten Island Ferry we were on pulled away from the dock, bound for the New Jersey side of the harbor. Without exception everyone looked to be in shock—and I knew I looked the same. What had started out as a normal day had spun out into a hellscape we were all doing the best we could to navigate. It was crazy how things could change in such a short time. It hadn’t even been two hours yet but it was more than clear that the entire world had changed, forever.

  Although we were no longer concerned about being separated, Tia and I continued to hold hands because we needed the connection. What we’d seen and been through over the course of the previous eighty minutes or so was too much to wrap our minds around. In many ways it felt like we’d been through something at lightning speed, and our minds were trying to catch up. Each and every one of us was covered in soot and debris. Any time I saw someone with a thicker layer, I knew they’d been closer to the Trade Center when it came down.