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Wish You Were Here
by Questinia
Posted on 12 September 2009 | 8:33 am 
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Wish You Were Here
I was chosen for jury duty on September 10. The rest were allowed to leave and resume their lives, and for some of them, their jobs in the nearby World Trade Center. Having to submit to the inevitability of jury duty, I left the courthouse and gave myself a lemons-into-lemonade thought. I looked up at the Twin Towers and decided that since these were the halcyon days of September in New York, I’d try Windows on the World for lunch or maybe breakfast. I’d never been there. After all, my life for the next few weeks as a juror in the NY Supreme Court was to start the next day, at 10:30 a.m. on Centre Street and I’d want to get out for a little fresh air.
I was awoken the next morning by what sounded like a broom handle battering ram hitting against the door of my top floor East Village railroad apartment. It was nothing, but it was very disturbing. I was there alone, so I was a bit vigilant. All my loved ones were out of the city. I showered and got ready to walk the mile to the New York City Supreme Courthouse in the shadow of the Twin Towers. I was to be there at 10:30 that AM and was running a bit late when it all began. Looking out of my window onto the street as the towers burned was the incongruous scene of young mothers pushing their strollers with coffee cups and freshmen NYU students rushing to their still unfamiliar campus. Insouciance on a New York City scale. The towers burned. The people jumping… seen easily even if a mile away. The towers fell. The fall was felt under my feet , a whimpering 3.6 on the Richter scale.
My mother had been on the phone with me during the deluge. “Well, dear, don’t you think you really ought to go to the courthouse anyway? Don’t you think you’ll get into trouble for not SHOWING UP?” (Had I been there on time I would have been in the chaos and debris). I figured it was her dizzy way of denying her daughter’s life was in danger.
When the initial layers of adrenaline washed and waned over me about a thousand times; when I realized I was alive; after I watched the news from the only station I could receive (CBS); when I realized the manhole covers weren’t going to blow up in some final infrastructure fuck-you aftershock, I still didn’t dare go outside for fear of the air. Although the sky was clear around me, I didn’t know whether the wind would shift. But for some strange reason, perhaps succumbing to the mania of apartment fever, I had the most bizarre yen: I wanted a facial in the worst way. I’ve never even had a facial. But as I sat in my apartment after having re-potted my jasmine-scented bonsai and playing the same piano piece over and over again, faster and faster, I wanted a bubble bath and a facial. Then I thought I’d go to the local Duane Reade for an antidote for anthrax and potassium iodide for nuclear radiation poisoning. For certainly those things were the after shocks to come. And Duane Reade would be closed soon and there would be a run all those things. And the St. Ives apricot scrub would be sold out. Cause after an apocalypse, who doesn’t want a chain store facial scrub to feel detoxified?
I am affiliated with St. Vincent’s Hospital in Manhattan’s West Village. The WTC was in its catchment area and I did my internship and residency training there. I was an intern during the first attack on the towers and the place got all the action. I worked the ER then. This time my gut told me to get out of New York ASAP. But here, my mother appealed to my professional purpose. “But, they’ll NEED you!” She echoed what I already knew I was going to do anyway. But not today. Today I AM ALIVE. I’ll go tomorrow, after I slept. Plus there were highly trained emergency personnel at the ready and whole slew of actual housestaff. I slept the deepest sleep I can remember. I didn’t know it then, but by so doing I ensured my mental health for the weeks and months to come.
I volunteered “for duty” early the next morning at St Vincent’s. I put on my white coat and joined my white coated physician brethern all huddled. Barely looking at me and without as much as a full sentence they cooed a bark: “New School! The Families!” I left for the New School, a campus in the vicinity, now set up to address the families who had already started congregating there in throngs. They stretched around the city block. I was assigned a work station by a benevolently smiling gentleman of the cloth and was given reams of stapled updates and rosters of area hospitals and make shift morgues from Staten Island to Jersey city to Columbia to Lincoln Hospital in the Bronx. I was also supposed to do crisis intervention with the families. But no one was really in crisis. It was ultra-calm. There was a real sense that most made it out. It was just a question of unraveling the worst rush hour congestion in the city’s history. Everyone was being tended to somewhere! It was only a chaotic skein of yarn of an order of magnitude of chaotic chaos. It’s funny how we all turned into urban Pollyannas with furrowed brows. Fortunately I had slept. I was unusually clear-minded as I became part doctor, part hostess, part soldier, part victim.
As each family and non-family member came before me, the tragedy went to the particulars. “Yes” a mother said about her son, both immigrants from South America, “he worked at Windows on the World as a prep cook, he wanted to go to law school. He called me twice. ‘They’re telling me I should stay up here, mama,’ he said the first time, then ‘I’m going down the stairs….mama, I don’t think I’m going to make it’”. He didn’t. Later he was featured in a TV news magazine show.
As grand as the devastation was, so equally grand were the specificities of people’s lives I began to learn about.
“She wasn’t supposed to have gone into work today, but her boss wanted to go play golf and he wanted her to cover for him “, a man said about his mother, a secretary to a financial firm CEO. She survived. Some people were desperate. “Have you found her? She has really big boobs. I mean really big boobs”, a sister said of her missing, never found sibling. In they came, more stories, more updates, more instructions. As soon as the forlorn loved ones left my station, I could see them get back on the end of the line to wait the two or three hours it took for them to come back to me, eager for any news. I quickly realized what my colleagues were also realizing. We were being told by the trauma teams and ER that no one was being found. Most everyone who was to be found was already found. We became paper shufflers, leafing through dead data simply to distract.
One man I will never forget. He typified the complexion of the victims. Young bright and upwardly mobile. He was vivacious, young, and clearly adored his little sister. She had just gotten out of college and had landed a plum position at the ill-fated Cantor-Fitzgerald (everyone perished there except for its head who decided to take his children personally to the first day school). He showed me the picture of his sister, Brooke, saying “Look how beautiful she is, look how alive”. Every time he’d approach my station, he’d politely ask me if he could use my outlet to recharge his phone. He did this seven times. That meant I was there for over fourteen hours. Sitting. Not budging. A sessile constant in these people’s up- heaved lives. The benevolent gentleman of the cloth forced me to eat and drink. I took a few bites of sandwich he brought. I ate with the appetite of the grief-stricken. I offered my food to others who took it but likewise didn’t take to it. Mothers came in with their children looking for their children’s grandfather. Co-workers who made it out, fiancees, divorcees, lovers, friends, children. Policemen and firemen asking about missing comrades (they really got to me). It is truly hard to describe the spine- chilling bonhomie of these moments. We were truly united. A greater mass love I can’t imagine.
I kept a log of the number of people I was “looking for”. Around 120. Speaking to rounds of people looking for said 120 people, I told them I would contact them if I found anything. I wrote down thumbnail sketches like “really, really big boobs”. I’m now left with that log. The day ended and I walked the abandoned streets of the cordoned off area below 14th street. Walking in the middle of Fifth avenue alone for stretches at a time with no vehicles or people was truly something to experience.
I tried working in my Lower East Side clinic the following day, but by then the air had shifted bringing the electric stench to my neighborhood. That was it. I had to get out. Whitman and the EPA declared it safe and I said “bullshit”. I was stentorian about it. I told all my patients to go home, get air purifiers, or leave the city if they could. The air became heavy with toxins and you could hear passersby talking gibberish to themselves. I eventually breached the envelop of containment with my face mask, to enter what was the usual bustling of New York above 14th street. I left for a week. When I came back, I purchased the accompanying photograph a local photojournalist had taken while he was just below the towers. He only suffered a broken limb.
It’s funny how one can retrospectively connect the dots of synchronicity.
One was a child’s painting I had picked up a few years before because I liked its composition. It was of lower Manhattan’s skyline. But the Statue of Liberty was looking away from the city, her face looking away from the simple childishly drawn plane that was flying above the city toward the towers, while at her feet, at the confluence of the East and Hudson Rivers, there floated a sailboat called “Trouble”.
The other, occurring some years before that: A set of faux postage stamps I bought on the East Village’s Avenue A from the artist who made them. They were just like real postage stamps. In fact, I used one successfully to mail a letter. On the postage stamps were both Twin Towers ablaze with the caption: Wish You Were Here.
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a great piece in MediaMatters re Fux News
http://mediamatters.org/research/200909110016
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Wonderful post Q, I cried so many tears just reading it. A Brit photographer friend was right there, blocks away, he sent photos, we saw, we wondered, we cried.
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as the worsening Mental Health Crisis of 9/11 — I’ll say this: my mother ( and many like her) did not even vote in the 2000 election
after 9/11 something triggered in them.
they were told to be scared, and boy, were they! their every fear was played upon and magnified.
in ‘04 they dutifully carried their newly rediscovered Bibles and flags to the polls and cast their vote for Boy W.
then suddenly they are re-terrorized. being told that Boy W might have USED them — or worse, even Boy W was used. It was an evil horrific scam. Now, to admit this would be akin to saying “I am a complete and total fucktard and this whole thing is a joke of a sham, and I didn’t get it.”
THEN
to top it all off … they are told that the best person to steer is out of these many obvious messes is a BLACK HARVARD CHICAGO man with the name B-something HUSSEIN OSAMA!!!!!!
seriously, I think often how these people must feel in their tiny minds. This is not a healthy national psyche — even if it is only 25% — that’s a lot of very disturbed folks.
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September 12th, 2009 at 8:21 pm
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Yes, but in order to pull that up from people when a disaster or tragedy occurs, there has to be a propensity in the first place.
Remember Pixie’s column shows how people behave under great stress in natural and manmade disasters.
They naturally and instinctively help each other. They lean on each other.
This thing we have witnessed the last 8 years is no different than McCarthyism. The great fearful enemy is just a tool used by those in power to transfer money from the masses to the few.
Hitler did the exact same thing. He called on Germans to be frightened of Jews, just like the GOP is calling on it’s base to be frightened of Islam, Socialism, Obama.
It’s been played throughout history repeatedly.
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September 12th, 2009 at 10:12 pm
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I meant part of my answer for you Beyond. People who have a propensity for hysteria are particularly susceptible. Unfortunately it’s a stable temperament in much of humanity, not amenable to much change. As a nation we have to work it.
What I despise about the MSM is that they create the atmosphere for hysteria to continue, unchecked. They are literally making this nation ill.
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September 12th, 2009 at 10:45 pm
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I agree completely. It’s happened over time through several processes.
When Clinton signed the Telecommunications Act of 96, that was the tipping point. It enabled Murdoch to start Faux and it was nothing more than a lobbying effort by his partner at Fox Studios who had influence with the Democrats.
Murdoch had made a lot of money selling tabloidism in England and he brought it to America in the form of a fake news channel which exploited the same segment of population that had made Murdoch so much money in England. The uneducated and lower class. They are the ones who are generally prone to hysteria and fear, because they don’t have the educational tools or the experience to counter their fears.
The Cult of Celebrity is another part of it. Also, crazy sells. And finally, when networks allowed the news to become a slot that had to turn a profit, it changed from reporting the facts, to opinion.
I saw a big change in the MSM during the OJ Simpson trial. That’s when the cult of celebrity started to become more important in the media and that’s when the networks saw they could make money from promoting trivial personalities into cult status, distracting us from the issues and problems ordinary Americans have to deal with everyday.
Then of course, there’s the other profitable side of the cult of celebrity, which is getting everyone who is leading an ordinary life to be envious of these celebrities and their seemingly glamorous lives, so we will not be satisfied with our own lives and therefore buy the products that networks sell through their advertising slots.
The MSM has no other purpose than to make money, and if they could do it by showing live executions, they wouldn’t hesitate.
That’s how low they have sunk. And that’s the value of the internet and our voice. It’s free, and we can really discuss what’s valuable to us individually and collectively without the corporate media deciding for us, in their constant need to sell us Geritol.
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September 12th, 2009 at 10:54 pm
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You are spot on in your assessment. You are right about the OJ trial being a pivotal point. But there was one before that–and that was the first Gulf War. that was the point that the 24 hour news channels took hold.
The next pivotal point was 9/11. That was the point when we became deluged with three different pictures on the screen and the scrolling along the bottom, sides and top. That was also when the words BREAKING NEWS became etched into our psyche as Pavlovian instincts that make us almost break our necks as we walk thru the room–only to find out that the breaking news is that an alligator got loose from its cage in some idiot’s back yard.
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September 12th, 2009 at 11:14 pm
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Yes, I forgot to mention the Gulf War. That’s when Murrikans got to be armchair soldiers.
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September 12th, 2009 at 10:54 pm
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Nicely put and a great rundown of the media events that triggered the current situation!
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September 13th, 2009 at 8:05 am
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I think Bill Maher may be right: The American people are kinda’ stupid … but the American media is waaaaaaay more stupid than the people.
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September 13th, 2009 at 8:08 am
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I think they (network executives) know exactly what they are doing. They calculate what their stories are going to be by ratings. They have pretty sophisticated software.
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September 13th, 2009 at 8:06 am
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“crazy sells” No Kidding! seems to sell even more than SEX these days
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September 13th, 2009 at 8:09 am
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Imagine, crazy/sex together. LOL That’s your typical wingnut sex scandal.
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September 13th, 2009 at 8:32 am
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I don’t get it. Isn’t sex supposed to be crazy?
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September 13th, 2009 at 8:55 am
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Crazy good, not crazy weird…
“I’m going hiking on the Appalachian Trail. I haven’t called my kids for father’s day, because my Brazilian hottie makes me mourn for my lost teenage years. Please help me and my mid life crisis, Jeebus.”
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September 13th, 2009 at 8:11 am
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Put ‘em together…. “Crazy Sex”, and you’ve got a sure fire winner.
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September 13th, 2009 at 8:13 am
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oooh..good campaign slogan…like it!
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September 12th, 2009 at 10:15 pm
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Yes, and the Roman Church wielded that power for centuries, keeping the masses illiterate, scared and hungry. The human tragedy goes on and on and on….
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September 12th, 2009 at 10:28 pm
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But I might add that I am not so sure that the togetherness we all felt on 9/11 was exactly a kumbaya moment. Aside from the heroes that rushed in and the heroes who saved others and the good works done by the people Questinia speaks of–by that I mean the people who were THERE–we have to admit there was a cohesion that was beginning to build of “us against them” mentality. As a collective society there may have been some sanctimony involved in all our (I am referring to the “watchers,” which means all of us, except the hands on people) patriotism, crying, etc. Nothing really noble (societal) came out of 9/11, except from the hands’ on ones.
I am reminded of a fellow flight attendant who for all purposes, never came back to work. Sort of used the issue to stay home, not work and be overly dramatic about the job. She wrang her hands, played the drama queen–even though she wasn’t working that day. She saw the boogie man in every corner. She was/is a neo and one of those evangelical types. Sweet girl, but not too bright. Got preggers during all the breaks she took, got mad because she ran out of FMLA time (funny how the neos like to use all the gov’t stuff when it suits them). Ultimately she quit–
Yet she is the one I still get the hand-wringing “remember 9/11 blah blah blah” emails from. Scared to come back to work, yet floods everyone else with drama about 9/11 day in and day out.
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September 12th, 2009 at 10:04 pm
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They were brainwashed. You’re absolutely correct in equating it with other periods of hysteria. Your mother became hysterical. Hysterics have no center and can be easily manipulated.
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September 12th, 2009 at 10:11 pm
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You are so right. 25% is a LOT of people. Too many for comfort. That is 1/4th of the population. Then you have to consider about 20% that are just “here” and not really even aware of anything at all–dullards that don’t give a shit about anything. That means the brunt of society rests on the shoulder of about 55% of the nation. These are not good odds, folks.
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Questinia, your story took my breath away. It is so incredible to hear from someone who was “in the trenches” that day, that week.
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September 12th, 2009 at 10:07 pm
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Thanks zoozey. I’m glad to share it. Up to this point it was only a bunch of memories with just a shred of narrative, but there is so much more to this story.
BTW, I really love your gravatar. Is that a stewardess with a gun?
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September 12th, 2009 at 10:36 pm
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Yes, it is! She is my evil twin–the one that hides inside me and gets tired of smiling sweetly and telling people over and over and over to please turn off your electronic devices now……
I hope you can expand this article. I am glad you were able to sort out these feelings. I think your writing is beautifully poetic. You have a real gift and you really need to be published. I dugg this article. But this is good enough for the big guys. I didn’t know that you had been “at ground zero.” I hope writing this is somewhat therapeutic.
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September 12th, 2009 at 10:49 pm
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Wow, what a nice thing to say, zoozey. I consider you all big enough guys for me!
Yes, I guess it is therapeutic to write it, but even more therapeutic to share it.
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September 12th, 2009 at 11:20 pm
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True. Every time you tell it, it releases it a little from within you.
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Excellent post, Q. Thank you for sharing. You must have re-lived every moment as you were writing it.
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September 12th, 2009 at 6:57 pm
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Thanks MH. You’re absolutely right! That’s why it didn’t appear yesterday.
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September 12th, 2009 at 7:00 pm
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September 12th, 2009 at 7:04 pm
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Better late than never, Q!
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September 12th, 2009 at 7:49 pm
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Big Big hugs to you both!
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I’m here. I’ve read your post and like it. I cannot answer any more than that. Sorry.
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September 12th, 2009 at 5:14 pm
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There were policmen and firemen who came to me with the sweetest faces. They are the ones I felt the most for.
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September 12th, 2009 at 6:07 pm
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but it’s a part of all of US. it does not define us. it’s a part. clearly, I did not experience it the way you did, Q. nor would I ever attempt to fool myself into believing I could ever do the job that you or swooge do. I know that about myself.
9/11 was, imo, the greatest mental health crisis of my time in this nation … not in the world, not in all of history … just in my lifetime, in my country.
That so many of our nation’s best and brightest are so deeply scarred (and untreated) troubles me deeply.
unless and until we can face the reality of the longterm effects on our national psyche, and come to grips with the mental health issues that are currently exposing themselves as a direct result of 9/11, as well as some other less than pleasant events in American history, this will fester and grow.
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September 12th, 2009 at 6:49 pm
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We’re still in shock. We continue to alternate between being passively numb and psychotically hyper-vigilant. The psychotically hyper-vigilant being a large focus of contempt on this site.
To me this whole week is one giant flashback. I screamed at the top of my lungs when I saw the first tower fall. After that I half expected its twin, not wanting to be left alone would follow.
I don’t know why I wrote those last two sentences exactly, only that the images are so imprinted.
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September 12th, 2009 at 7:14 pm
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But you are here, Q. You have so much to offer … so much more to give. Imagine what you can teach the future medical professionals? I know it’s traumatic, and I know how it hits you upside the head and knocks you cold. But that’s my point. We have never really truly acknowledged the vast mental health crisis that stems from this tragedy.
do you know that my mother was completely normal up until that day (or at least seemed so)? that was her turning point.
it’s horrifying to watch people deteriorate … especially when we all act like the worst of it is over.
A lot of people broke that day. Some are only showing it now.
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September 12th, 2009 at 8:06 pm
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It really was more of a privilege than anything else.
I’d really be interested in speaking to your mother! Something got unleashed.
I ask people where they were on 9/11. The stories I hear sometimes rival the ones I heard on that day.
Like the police officer who was walking on the sidewalk when the jumpers came flying down, ending up as pools of flesh-colored vomit. She said they even smelled like vomit. This is a lurid example but nonetheless… She became an alcoholic.
I am also treating people who are treating people like her, because there is secondary trauma which occurs. Just hearing the stories are traumatic.
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September 12th, 2009 at 7:15 pm
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“The psychotically hyper-vigilant being a large focus of contempt on this site.”
but that’s my point
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September 12th, 2009 at 7:21 pm
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Actually that’s false. That’s not part of the criticism of the site. There was only ever criticism of the way it was being run.
Statistically, one has to understand that hyper vigilance damages your life, more than it helps it. One cannot live in constant fear, always worried about what tomorrow will bring.
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September 12th, 2009 at 7:26 pm
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I didn’t interpret it as criticism of FRT – instead we are contemptuous of the asshole psychotic wingnuts who are trying to ruin this country. And justly so!
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September 12th, 2009 at 7:39 pm
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Yes, but I think Q is talking about something else. An urgency she feels that she thinks others share, but with a group site, one has to be more tolerant of a wide range of opinions and attitudes, and there’s some people who are not tolerant of that, who have left.
That kind of attitude can be as offputting as the psychotic wingnuts.
People who are adults already have their minds made up about most issues. Blogs will not change minds, what they do, is allow people to communicate more than one viewpoint, more than one opinion.
I as an author and contributor, resent it when people come to this site, (and you know who I am talking about here) in order to tell others what to do, what to think, how to post, or what to say or not say, yet they wouldn’t stand for anyone doing the same to them. Not in a million years.
That’s hypocrisy, and it’s no better than the Republicans.
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September 12th, 2009 at 7:40 pm
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Those people have become like the Republicans.
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September 12th, 2009 at 7:51 pm
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I was referring to the wingnuts and extremists from the right.
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September 12th, 2009 at 7:55 pm
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You mean a hyper vigilance towards the wingnuts and extremists?
Because that’s not what you wrote.
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September 12th, 2009 at 7:59 pm
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The best way to combat extremists is to ridicule them. Understanding ridicule, versus hyper vigilance and angst are two completely separate issues.
What we do at FRT is ridicule them, and that’s how they should be addressed.
One cannot address the crazies of the world seriously, because you do two things simultaneously.
You reinforce their own view that their craziness is valid, and you also lose your own agenda in their craziness.
This is what we have been trying to avoid, both in politics and here.
Perhaps if you think about it for a while, you’ll understand.
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September 12th, 2009 at 8:06 pm
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I’m certain she meant we at FRT have contempt for those who are psychotically hyper-vigilant.
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September 12th, 2009 at 8:12 pm
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But I don’t believe that wingers are psychotically hyper vigilant. Where was their vigilance when Bush was bombing and spending immense amounts of money in the past 8 years?
They are patriarchal, bigoted and fearful. They have become desensitized to other human beings, and achieve through merely being born on this soil, but not through any actions of their own.
They want accolades and pats on the back for nothing. They want to assert their superiority over others.
That’s nothing to do with hyper vigilance. Hyper vigilance is one of the symptoms of PTSD.
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September 12th, 2009 at 8:12 pm
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It could be open to interpretation if one did not see it was in response to kel’s discussing the long-term effects on our national psyche.
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September 12th, 2009 at 8:15 pm
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There are no long term effects except for those that were there like yourself, and those that lost loved ones.
Most people, especially the right have moved on. It has been long forgotten in their quest to buy a new car, a new blackberry.
Capitalism itself is a cycle of fear/greed that can never be satiated.
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A beautifully written story, Q. So different from other accounts I’ve read, yet alike in certain grim truths ~ the way it all unfolded. The way people were looking for their missing loved ones, sure that they were being treated somewhere. And then the horror of realizing they are gone. Dead. The clear skies giving way to clouds of poison. The disbelief and anger mellowing into reflection.
Excellent piece.
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September 12th, 2009 at 5:16 pm
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Thanks Cultchah. Variations on a theme. I feel really privileged, oddly, to have been there.
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September 12th, 2009 at 5:35 pm
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in a way, Q-cumber, it’s made you who you are today.
you would not be complete without that experience.
I have friends who have lost a child, and years out, there is a part of them that feels incomplete without that experience.
Humans are an interesting breed, to be sure.
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September 12th, 2009 at 6:56 pm
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I agree. Your analogy to people losing a child is apt. I guess it just goes beyond anything one can describe. (Especially after having just drunk a pint of Guinness Extra Stout. It certainly punctuated my life.
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Excellent article, Q. Wow, thanks for being there I surely don’t envy your job but highly appreciate you et al for their service.
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September 12th, 2009 at 4:53 pm
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Thanks a lot. You would have done the same thing we all did. You just couldn’t help it. The character of the nation really came out in New York on that day and the ensuing ones… until Bush told us to go shopping and stop being compassionate.
We worked as a team. That spirit is still there, but squashed a bit now.
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Spectacular post, Q. It’s so moving to hear the people stories from that day, truly. I enjoyed hearing you say you were stentorian about your suggestions, leadership was sorely needed, I’m sure.
Splendid photograph at the top, even more special as you knew the artist.
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September 12th, 2009 at 4:49 pm
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The original photograph was 3 by 5 feet and hung in an illuminated ground floor shop window. When I first saw it, I felt guilty over its magnificence. Alternately repulsed and fascinated, I finally bought a smaller version after a month of acclimating to it.
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Thanks to you, Questinia I was there. Very good post. Left me breathless.
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September 12th, 2009 at 10:24 am
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Tx kitkat. I’m still there every 9/11.
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Wow, what a story!
I dugg it.
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September 12th, 2009 at 9:49 am
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Thanks Beyond. It was hard to write cause it was really hard to edit!
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September 12th, 2009 at 9:53 am
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September 12th, 2009 at 9:54 am
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and :dugg:
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September 12th, 2009 at 10:14 am
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