Sept 11, 2001.

The day I couldn’t leave work…

It was a beautiful sunny morning, not a cloud in the sky. My kids were at school. My son was about eight years of age and my daughter, five. I was at work as a nurse, on a postpartum floor. The morning was as normal as any other. I walked past a room and our cleaning lady, Sheila was standing looking at a television in an empty patient’s room. The look on her face made me stop in my tracks. What’s going on? I wondered. On the screen was an image of a plane heading into the side of the Twin Towers (New York). I am not even sure if I had ever heard of, or thought anything of the Twin Towers before that moment. But the image was horrifying. You just knew this was deliberate. There was no way a plane would not have been diverted, even if they had mechanical trouble. We stood and watched the fire and explosion and you knew at that moment you had just witnessed so many perish. But it was not over.

I had to go to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at that time and I started to work with a mom in that room. All the televisions were on and we watched the same image over and over. The media was trying to figure out what exactly was playing out in front of us. Then to my horror and everyone around me, we watched as another plane was heading for the second tower. It was surreal. It too entered the tower, and instantly, exploded. Watching it in real-time made you question what you had just witnessed. What was happening? Today, so many images are watched over and over on YouTube, etc, but at that time, just seeing this play out in front of…