Remembering 9/11

I had just started (the week before) my new job. In Boston. A co worker came around the corner and asked if I had heard about the WTC. We tried the internet but all websites were down.

Someone had a 9 inch black and white tv (like for a hurricane) so we tried to watch that but we couldn't see much.

I had to go into a meeting with my new boss who knew nothing about it. Just as the meeting ended I picked up a call for the boss. It was the Chief. I gave it to him and you could see his look... like why is she calling me here? I knew why. He said a few words and hung up. He goes "we are evacuating" why are we evacuating? The managers broke in and told us what happened. Everyone was leaving and me and my new co workers were going to try to watch at a local bar. It was packed. So we decided to go home.

I got to the train and it was packed. I mean all seats and people standing in the halls like a subway. People were passing around their phones in case you needed to call someone. The trains were required to go 5 miles per hour. A ride that should have taken an hour took 3.

I got home at 2 PM and finally got to see it all.

They made us go to work the next day. I just remember being very out of it for months afterwards. The boss that day is dead now but god bless him for being kind of my mental state. I did change my career trajectory afterwards. A mistake.

I was in grad school at the time. I was getting ready to go into the lab and run an experiment. I turned on the TV to watch the morning news as was my habit. I couldn't believe my eyes. I stayed glued to the television all morning.

I was at university. Still living with my parents. Got home after lectures, turned on the television and couldn’t believe what I saw.

I was working in a therapy department that was in a basement that was like a bomb shelter. There was no TV, no radio, no internet. So we relied on what we saw on the patient lounge TVs upstairs. Every time someone would come downstairs we'd all gather around trying to find out anything. We heard lots of rumors that we thought were true. I remember going down with a face I knew was ghost white to tell them the Capitol had been bombed. I would believe that for hours. When the 2nd tower came down I was writing an order in someone's chart. The lounge was a few feet away and the patients on that unit had end-stage dementia so they didn't really have the ability to follow. I heard a sudden gasp and looked up just in time to see the tower fall. I don't know where that patient got the connection that this was bad but he was right. After that they told us to finish with patients as fast as we could and go home. I had a home health patient that absolutely had to be evaluated that day so i did that first. The drive to her home put me near the airport and there were no planes. Just still blue skies. It's a good thing that patient did not need OT because it wasn't much of an evaluation. We mostly watched TV and chatted a bit about the horror. I'll always remember her American flag flying proudly against that blue sky. After that I went home and stared at the TV.