:: Venting Insanity ::

:: Friday, August 29, 2003 ::

please don't ever forget: my own 9-11 transcript
Transcripts from the September 11th attacks were released today after a lawsuit was filed by The New York Times. Reading this article brought back everything that hit me that day. I was lucky enough to have changed my mind about going into the city that morning. There had been a job fair a few blocks from Penn Station that I had been planning on attending. I woke up and just felt like not going.

Who knows why, but I remember the phone ringing off the hook all morning. I finally got up and answered it about 9 am.

"TURN ON THE TV!" It was Dad. He was on his way to work, stuck in the usual morning rush hour traffic, and had heard what happened on the radio. He could see the smoke from as far east as the Nassau/Suffolk border.

"What channel?" I asked.

"Any channel... you won't miss it."

"What happened?"

"A plane hit the Twin Towers."

"Serious?"

"Yes, go turn on the TV."

"Was it on purpose?"

"There were two planes... one in each tower. Go turn on the TV!"

"That wasn't an accident." I was still half asleep. It was taking a while for things to register. It just didn't sound real. I don't remember if we even said goodbye before hanging up. I went downstairs, not really believing it, and flipped on the TV. StarSight gathers channel guide information overnight and resets the TV and cable box for channel 13. Public television. No news on there. It was some strange British sitcom. I flipped one channel down... Long Island News Channel 12.

I nearly fell off the couch.

Sure enough, clouds of thick black smoke were pouring from the upper floors of the Twin Towers. I have tears in my eyes as I write this, remembering the images on that television screen. I flipped to another channel. Same thing, different angle. Another channel. Again, there it was. Some had different footage of the various events of the day. Someone said a plane hit the Pentagon. The screen split, showing both buildings burning.

The Pentagon? Holy shit. What the hell was going on?

Another plane lost... no one knew where it was.

Then... the first tower fell. At that point, I had been on my feet again, debating leaving the room for something to eat. All I could do was sink to my knees. The top tilted ever so slightly, then collapsed in on itself, disappearing into the smoke. The rest of the building peeled away like a banana skin, rolling outwards from itself in a greyish brown cloud of dust and debris. It started slow, like a movie, and then accelerated until there was nothing but a cloud left behind.

"All those people..." I remember saying out loud. "Oh God, those people..." I started crying.

The phone rings again. I can hear the answering machine beeping that there were already a few messages on it. I picked up the phone.

"Jessi! Did you see the news?" Nana asked.

"Yeah... Dad called me."

"Are you okay?"

"I'm okay... All those people, though. They're dead."

"I know, honey. I know."

"The tower fell."

"It what?"

"It fell. It's gone. One of the towers is gone!"

"But... I didn't see..." We sit in silence as the news reporter on NBC is hysterically repeating that Tower Two... or was it One? No one was sure at that point... it had fallen. The replay. "Oh God... Jessi... I can't believe it."

"All those people..." I tried to keep my voice from breaking so Nana wouldn't worry about me too much. We were both home alone. Mom and Auntie Lyn were at work... Dad was on his way in... MOM! "What about the IRS?!" I said quickly. "That's not exactly a secret location, you know!"

"I think they'll be okay," Nana said. "I'm sure they'll evacuate."

"They have to, right? I mean, they wouldn't keep them there after this... it's an attack!" Was that another replay? I blinked. Nana said something, but I wasn't sure what. "OHMYGOD, OHMYGOD!!!"

"What?"

"The other Tower!" Nana just gasped. "Oh my God! All those people!" I couldn't cry... I had no tears left from the first one. I just couldn't cry...

"We'll call each other after they get home."

"Okay..."

"Are you sure you're okay?"

"Yeah... are you?"

"I think so."

"I love you, Nana."

"I love you, too, sweatheart." We said goodbye and hung up. I forced myself from the TV and played the messages on the machine. Dad yelling for me to wake up. Nana asking if I was there and I was okay...

"Please call me," she said. Dad again. A hang up... probably Dad or Nana.

A while later, Mom came home. We checked in with Nana and Auntie Lyn again. Mom said they evacuated the building. She said the whole place was in a fog. People actually left the parking lot in an orderly fashion instead of the normal "get out of my way, I'm getting out of here first" attitude they normally held at the shift change. The gate would go up and a car would go. It would come down. The gate would go up and a car would go. It would come down. Every other car at intersections. No rushing... no beeping horns... no yelling and flailing of arms and fingers.

We hugged. I cancelled my physical therapy appointment for that evening.

Dad called again. Mom got the phone this time. I don't remember the whole conversation.

"Come home... please," she said. "Just come home." He did. We went away. We turned off the TV. We locked up the house. We got in the truck. Dad took us out to the club. He borrowed a key and we took one of the golf carts around the property. It was so quiet. But, as we sat on the lake's western damn, looking west along the Peconic River and over county land, towards New York City, I couldn't help but see those two towers burning... and falling... again and again and again... Mere shadows in my mind's eye, hovering just over the trees. We were in the middle of nowhere, the only sounds were buzzing insects and birds. Not even planes from the nearby old Grumman place. They were downed by the Government, sky diving classes cancelled. Yet, even away from anything 'civilized' (save for the stretch of high tension wires running a trace across the island), I could still see the city and those falling towers.

That night, as I weeded through e-mails and offline messages from people who knew I lived in NY and wanted to know if I was okay (Thank you all! I felt so much better seeing those!!! {{hugs}}), Mom came downstairs to where Dad and I were in the basement.

"The fourth plane... the one that crashed in Pennsylvania," she said. She looked like she was going to cry.

"What about it?" Dad asked.

"Joe was on that plane."

"Joe?" I asked.

"From the track. He and Linda were going to San Francisco for her job," Mom said. "They were going to make a vacation of it... They only started dating a few months ago."

"You mean, 'Ray the Cat' Joe?" I asked. "Joe DeLuca?" Mom nodded. My heart sank. "What about Scott?" I said suddenly. "He's in the NYPD."

"I don't know," she said. "I haven't heard from Mrs. Spencer. God... I didn't even think of him."

"I hope for Kristin's sake he wasn't there," I said.

"Me, too," Mom said.

That night, I could still see it happening... My room was dark. The images haunted me. I couldn't get rid of my chills, no matter how much I curled up into a ball under the blanket. Was Scott okay? Had they hurt Joe and Linda before the plane crashed? Who was responsible?

But my biggest question was, "Why?"

I turned my light on so I'd have things to look at. I slept with a light on for almost a month to prevent the images from coming back at me in the night.

I found out a few days afterwards that Scott hadn't been in the city that day. He'd been on sick leave and then had a shift in Queens. He never made it to the Trade Center before they fell.

I found out that Linda had been one of the people on a cell phone. She had called her mother. She said, "We're going to try and take the plane back. We can't let any more people die. I love you, Mom." Later reports suggested Joe had taken one of the serving carts and used it to knock down one of the terrorists. While I don't know if it's true, I'm glad to know that they went down fighting. I'm glad they had the opportunity to strike back and prevent more deaths. Someone from the track stopped by the crash site and placed two flags crossed... one was a checkered flag for racing... the other was an American flag.

I hope they're both in a better place now... and I hope they're together.

My heart aches when I look at that hole in the skyline. I never knew it without those towers downtown. They were finished just before I was born. Dad said he had snuck up there once. He was there for a meeting and was curious just how many floors up above him were done on the inside. You could still see the sunset through them because there were no internal walls yet. The offices weren't sold. He got on one of the elevators and just rode it up as high as it would go... the second lobby. Following the flow, he grabbed another elevator and got off on a random floor. It was completely empty. He could walk an entire circle around the tower and get a 360 degree view of New York.

He told me it was one of the most amazing sights he'd ever seen.

I live two hours away from New York. I never went to Windows on the World or the rooftop prominade. I've never been to the top of the Empire State Building. I've never been to Ellis Island or the Statue of Liberty. I take them for granted. They're right there. I see them everytime I walk past.

"I'll go up next time," I say.

There was no next time.

When I went to the Jewel concert with Aly, Estelle, Cathy, and Nick... I wanted to see it. I had to see it. I had to go down there myself and see where the Trade Center had been. Aly and Estelle were cool with the idea, so we went.

I was too late to see NY from over a hundred stories above. Instead, I saw a heartwrenching hole in the ground surrounded by a 12 foot steel fence. I leaned on the fence and stared.

There's still part of me that can't believe it's gone...