A Year's Retrospect

by Jennifer Martino, M.D.

On September 11, 2002, I woke from a dream that I was with a friend in a tower that was collapsing, trying to escape. There were people crowded around the elevator, patiently waiting, but when the doors opened the elevator was mangled and we had to walk down the stairs. We got out, but something was wrong with me; I felt too weak to move and a paramedic put me on a stretcher. But I was in a panic÷I had to get away from the building and I begged my friend to get us out of there. He put me on a motorbike and drove us both away.

It was about 4:30 in the morning. I lay awake in the dark, thinking of the thousands of people who one year ago left their families mindlessly, without knowing they would never see each other again. And how those that left died in unspeakable terror, while those that were left watched it helplessly. I knew that everyone on the living side of that equation was awake remembering the same thing. Eerily, out of the quiet grew the mournful bleat of bagpipes. I got up, threw my window open, and leaned out to see a predawn procession down Fifth Avenue, telling me, yes, it was all real.

I went out to my living room and felt an ocean-sized sadness well through me and stream out every pore. I couldn't cry hard enough. I took out my guitar and sang every sad song I've written and nothing penetrated that gaping space I felt a part of.

In my cab to work I remembered the shock of that evil plume churning through the otherwise perfect sky as I turned onto Fifth Avenue last year. Everyone was frozen in his tracks like a Batman episode, all facing downtown. It was my cab driver that morning÷an anonymous, middle-aged, middle-eastern man÷who delivered the news. ãTWO PLANES!ä he wailed, ãNO ACCIDENT!ä And then the utter silence as we inched our way down a choked Fifth Avenue; I was mesmerized by that bleeding smoke and all I could think was: Holy shit I have to get to work. With strange relief. The anticipation of that calmed me; I would have something to do that could be of help, and it would be probably be too much to let me process what I would actually be doing.

That memory rekindled the tears I had hoped to leave behind in my living room. Thankfully as we turned off Fifth, a blissful faced nun handing out pictures of mangled fetuses like flowers in front of the abortion clinic on 30th Street was the touch of New York absurdity I needed. She was the miracle that got me past the irritating guard checkpoint÷that was having its first birthday of course÷and into the hospital without losing it. Would I ever stride into Tisch hospital without digging out my ID again?

And it was strange because last summer I had an inexplicable sense that I was about to leave something behind that I was going to miss more than I realized. I couldn't figure it out; there was nothing about last summer to set it apart from most other summers of my life. But now I understand that the first 34 years of my life were the ones where I had freedom, but didn't know that I did. And the remainder will be the ones where I don't, and I know that I don't. It was the same sting of a teenager first learning how love can hurt.

After a few embarrassing outbursts at colleagues who weren't aware of how deeply I was processing my feelings, I managed to settle into my day. But my screen was split, and while one side was trying to accurately compare lung nodules, the parallel was reliving it all÷the families waiting in front of Tisch the next day, the missing and dead smiling at me as I walked past the sign plastered construction barricade at Bellevue's entrance. And in the middle I thought, how does one ever comprehend the incomprehensible?

Nevertheless, however much I wondered how many patients I would wind up accidentally killing by the day's end, I was glad I came to work. Sheilah Rosen, who had been in tower two that day, went with me to the memorial service at noon and it felt good to have a friend to cry with. But as I looked around the packed auditorium of students and nurses and doctors and staff, I realized I had so many more of those than I would ever know. I read accounts of students, any one of which could have been me, sorting through body parts, trying to identify which part it was. But the gaping hole I felt in my apartment alone in the predawn hours felt a little more bearable, and it was the first time I understood the community of our medical center. And in the same way that I used to know I was home when I saw those towers loom up on the horizon, I knew I was home.

I straggled back to my apartment at 5pm, remembering the same walk past armored personnel vehicles that looked as out of place as anything ever could in a city that embraces everything. There was a silence to the rush hour crowd; not nearly to the shocked degree it was last year, but every face seemed its own unique reflection of solemn.

And now what I find myself wondering most of all is: What would it be like if it had never happened? Can we even imagine that the twin towers could be still there and we could all be so blissfully na•ve again? Even the most innocent of interchanges seems tinged with it, and I feel a debt to the dead and grieved to make something better with that hue. New York was a humbled city that day, and every time we see the sky in our skyline where it shouldn't be, it still is. None of us can afford to look on images of war or grief with cinematic detachment, ever. Heavy police presence and ongoing threats continually remind us that any random Tuesday of our lives might be the last Tuesday of our lives; the mundane counts. And every opportunity we have to love someone is a gift not just to them, but to ourselves. Because if you can learn to love people while living in New York City, you can be the richest and happiest person on earth. And that, I think, is good.

Jen Martino-9/14/2002.