As she stared at the photo on top of her collection and placed herself in a happier time, she finally realized that she couldn’t get from here to there on her own. And she wept as she gathered up the rest of her belongings while on her knees.
“Are you hurt? Can I help you?” a passerby wondered as he stopped and leaned over to help the bag lady.
“Hurt? Yes. Can you help me pick up the pieces of my life?” she replied as if she were talking to herself while wiping away the tears.
“I was thinking more about picking you up from the floor,” said Al as he offered her a hand.
The bag lady waved off his hand, saying, “I’m OK. I’m just packing up my stuff. Some guy tripped over my wagon.”
“Do I know you? Your voice sounds familiar, but I can’t place the face.”
The bag lady looked up and recognized Al from her previous life and quickly turned away. She didn’t want him to make the connection. She had gone out of her way to find places that were far from her former life.
“I doubt it, mister,” she said with a hint of fear.
Al’s curiosity soared as he heard her distinctive voice again—a voice he had associated with unhappy times some ten years ago. He squatted down next to her and looked at her face-to-face, studying her features. His memory bank worked hard at matching the raspy voice, the puffy, weathered face and sad, sunken eyes with someone he had known in his life, but he couldn’t place her, and he didn’t want to make the situation any worse for the bag lady by staring at her any longer, so Al stood up and walked away.
But after taking a dozen steps, Al turned back and caught up with the bag lady, who had quickly gathered her things and was walking as fast as she could in the opposite direction. “Valerie? Is it you?” Al asked as if his question was absurd.
“No!” she said while walking away even faster.
“That’s what you said to me at the office when you walked away from me the last time I saw you. I’ll never forget that day, and how you looked from the back as you walked away. It is you, but it can’t be!”
The bag lady stopped in her tracks, opened her teary eyes slowly while looking into Al’s inquisitive eyes with fear and humiliation. “Yes, Al. It’s me, Valerie,” she said as she wiped her tears. “I don’t believe it. What happened to you?” Al shook his head in amazement and said, “I’d like to talk with you to find out but can’t now.
Please call me,” he said as he handed her his business card and ten dollars.
How ironic, she thought to herself. Just when she was ready to accept help from someone, the someone offering help was Al.
“I will,” she said while turning her face away in shame and gratitude. “Thank you, Al.”
CHAPTER 8
Not Just Another Day
Few buildings in the world struck such a majestic pose as the twin towers of the World Trade Center. Each of their one hundred and ten stories stood high above everything around them and served as a gateway for those flying in and out of the city. Many pilots routed their planes above lower Manhattan on their way to and from the airports so their passengers got a good view of the towers. Meanwhile, some fifty thousand people from around the world worked in and visited these landmarks daily. No other buildings in the world better symbolized international commerce and demonstrated what was possible when people worked together for their common good. The World Trade Center was like a garden where hopes and dreams were planted. Ann Weir and Tadesse Tiruneh were among those who had come to them on this day to do just that.
As Ann pressed the elevator button that would take her to her 8:30 a.m. job interview on the seventy-seventh floor of Tower One, Tadesse was getting out of his taxi in front of Tower Two.
“Izo,” said the driver to Tadesse as he closed the door of the cab behind him. It was good to hear an encouraging “Make it happen. You can do it,” in his native language as he was about to sell the biggest business proposal of his life. Before walking to the building’s entrance, he reflexively took a deep breath and looked up at the sky as if to say, “OK, God, any help you’d like to provide would be appreciated.” He was amazed that for him to see the sky, he had to look straight up because the building just kept climbing. If he hadn’t seen it from a distance, he would have sworn now that it stretched to infinity.
Tadesse’s appointment was for 9:00 a.m. but he wanted to arrive early just in case he ran into delays on his way. He decided to use the half hour of extra time he had to review all the important points he wanted to make in his presentation. In the lobby, he found a Starbucks Coffee shop and made it his temporary office. Maybe he’d get some last-minute inspiration for his Ethiopian coffee venture from Starbucks. He was amazed at all the many different flavored coffees on the menu. After ordering a cup of plain black, Tadesse understood that while flavored coffees weren’t big in Ethiopia, they apparently were in the United States. But his flavored coffees would have to be distinctive and be branded Ethiopian.
Why not name different coffee flavors after Ethiopia’s emperors? This would give his coffees unique distinctions that were tied to Ethiopia’s rich culture. But he knew that getting people to order a cup of Haile Selassie would take a lot of work and money—except in Jamaica where Haile Selassie was regarded as God incarnate by a pot-smoking cult called Rastafarians.
Before becoming Ethiopia’s last emperor, a reign that stretched from 1930 to 1974, Haile Selassie had been called Ras Tefari. He had also traced his lineage back to King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. While Ethiopians acknowledged Haile Selassie’s roots and even called him the Lion of Judah and King of Kings, they didn’t regard him as God and were baffled as to why a group of Jamaicans would. “Must have something to do with all the pot they smoke,” Tadesse would tell those who asked him about it.
CHAPTER 9
An Historic News Day
With just fifteen minutes before his meeting with the investment company on the eighty-third floor of Tower Two, Tadesse put his papers away to spend a few minutes watching the news on the shop’s TV. And while Father Tom entered the neighborhood elementary school to talk to the students about his fire chaplain’s job, Al was at his desk answering emails from co-workers around the world. He had a great view of upper Manhattan out of his huge office window that covered the wall behind his desk. On a clear day like today, he could see past the Empire State Building all the way to Central Park.
Al was a student of risk. It was his job to manage it, but more than that, he found risk and how people responded to it fascinating. While some enjoyed living on the edge, defying risks of all kinds, others were just the opposite. Al fell somewhere in between, so when he heard an explosion and felt his office tremble, he wasn’t sure what to think and do.
“Hey, Bill,” he blurted to his co-worker in the adjoining office, “what the hell was that?”
“I don’t know, but I’m going to find out,” Bill said as he rushed into Al’s office.
“It felt like an earthquake, but sounded like a bomb.”
“Let’s not get carried away. A bomb?” Bill chided.
“I guess you weren’t around when a truck bomb blew a big hole in the basement garage here and killed a bunch of people in ninety three. But even that didn’t shake the place like this and didn’t make the bang we just heard.”
Al and Bill walked through the main office area to talk with their colleagues about what they had just felt and heard, to learn if anyone had other insights. After a few minutes of conversing with everybody around, the cause remained a mystery. Al and Bill headed back to their adjoining offices. Al was sorting through some papers a few minutes later when he heard Bill shout.
“Look out your window! What’s that?” Bill ran to the window in his office.
“Hard to tell,” Al shouted back as he watched a shower of debris fall to the ground from above while he stood at his office window. “Something must have happened on the upper floors,” Al said as his eyes shifted upward.
“
Our phones are out,” shouted someone else from a cubicle.
“So is our power,” screamed another.
“Let’s get out of here, Al,” Bill urged as he rushed into Al’s office, his eyes filled with panic. “Something is very wrong.”
“Look, an office chair,” Al said in amazement as he pointed out of his office window. “What the?” he interrupted himself when he saw something else fly by from where the chair had come, just a few feet from them on the other side of the window.
“A man! A man! A man!” Al screamed in horror.
When they ran to the window and looked down to the street, they saw a growing crowd of people gathered around the World Trade Center complex. Flashing lights of fire engines and police cars were converging on it as well.
Without saying another word to each other, Al and Bill packed up their laptops and brief cases to get out of the building as fast as they could. They’d have their questions answered later. As they packed up, Al’s cell phone rang. It was a very concerned Helen telling him that Fox News had just reported that a plane had crashed into his office building about ten minutes ago. She described the live pictures of the crash site she was watching in horror, as a large fiery gash, about twenty floors from the top, spewed huge flames and billowed massive black clouds of smoke. Since Al’s office was on the seventy-sixth floor, it meant the crash and the fire it started were about ten stories above them.
“Get out of there!” Helen pleaded.
“I’m on my way. I’m with a group from my company. I love you. See you soon,” Al said—his heart pounding in his throat.
With his computer strapped on his shoulder and briefcase in hand, Al left his private office and rounded up all those there in his company to report what he had just learned.
“A plane crashed ten floors above us. We’ve got to get out of here now because the fire is going to spread quickly. The stairs are our only option.” Al told them as he and Bill led the way out.
“Incredible,” said one who closed his eyes and shook his bowed head.
“Those poor people who were in those offices up there,” said another, his arms folded across his chest as he stared blankly at the floor.
“I have some friends who work on the ninety-sixth floor,” said another who just realized that they were probably dead. “No! No! Tell me this isn’t happening,” he said as he held his head in both hands.
A couple dozen people from Al’s office entered the office-lined hallway, telling everybody else who they saw what had happened and urging them to flee now. The group, now triple in size, walked past the power-starved elevators to the stairway around the corner. Except for a few panic-stricken people who darted in and out, pushing people out of the way to get to the stairs first, everyone was composed.
They found the same situation on the stairway, where the traffic was relatively light. Just as Al was about to take his first step down, he realized that he had left his cell phone on his desk. Seeing that there were no impediments to his exit down the stairs, Al ran back to retrieve his phone. On his way, as he passed others rushing to the exit, he assured coworkers that he’d be right behind them.
Al’s phone was where he had left it on his desk; he swiped it and slipped it into his jacket pocket before making an about-face and running back to the stairs.
CHAPTER 10
A Journey through Hell Interrupted
Just as he was about to enter the stairway, Al’s phone rang again. The voice on the other end of the line was that of a distraught woman, sobbing as she said, “Al, I’m sorry. Please forgive me.”
“Who is this?” a very impatient Al huffed.
“Valerie. It’s Valerie. Can you forgive me?”
“Valerie, a plane just crashed into the World Trade Center. I’ve got to get out of here. Can’t talk now ... call me later.”
Al put away his phone and opened the stairway door. But this time he entered alone and ran into two middle-aged men carrying, on a chair, a young woman in her twenties. She was badly burned and in shock. They were the only ones coming down the stairs at this moment. One of the men, short of breath, called out to Al as they passed him, “Hey, one floor up. We thought we heard someone crying for help.”
With a hint of burnt jet fuel in the air, and images of the young woman—her anguished face, charred flesh and burnt clothes stamped on his mind—Al hesitated for a moment. “It’s OK. The fire is … is about … ten flights… up from here,” said one of the men. Al’s heart raced as he leapt up the stairs two steps at a time.
In an instant, he was on the seventy-seventh floor, but didn’t hear anything. When Al opened the stairway door, nobody was around, and silence filled the hallway. Just to make sure, he walked around the corner. Still nobody, but he heard a faint tapping or clicking sound coming from an elevator. He walked over to it and the sound, still faint, got louder. He put his ear to the door where the tapping was coming from; now he also heard the muffled voice of a woman crying, “Help. Help. I’m in here.”
“OK. I hear you,” Al screamed at the door. He tried pulling the doors apart with his hands, but couldn’t. He needed a crowbar but he settled for a metal sculpture that was hanging on the wall behind the receptionist’s desk in a nearby office. It was a welded piece of modern art about three feet long.
Al slid a flat edge of the piece into the seam of the elevator door, working it in to give him leverage. He then pulled hard to one side, opening the door a few inches. He was then able to grip the door with both hands. With all his strength, he and the woman inside pulled the door open enough to place the sculpture between the doors to hold them open. The elevator car was stuck between floors. Ann Weir was standing in it with her waist at about floor level.
Ann was embarrassed, not scared. Apparently, she was on her way down when the plane had crashed into the building and cut the power. “Thank you so much,” she told Al as he pulled her out. “I was afraid I’d be trapped in here for a while.”
“Come on. We’ve got to go,” Al declared as he ran to the stairs.
“What are you doing? Are all the elevators broken?” said a confused Ann.
Realizing that Ann didn’t know what had happened, Al told her, “A plane crashed into our building about twenty minutes ago. All the power is out and there’s a fire about ten stories up that will be spreading down here soon, so there’s no time to waste.”
Just then, the elevator car that Ann had been trapped in suddenly disappeared down the shaft, leaving an empty space that startled Al and Ann. They stared at the open shaft for a moment, and then they heard ominous roars, like booming ocean waves crashing on the shore. The roars quickly grew louder and louder just before flames from above shot past them down the shaft. Al grabbed Ann’s hand and led her to the stairway without saying a word. They ran as fast as they could.
This time when Al opened the door, there was a lot of traffic on the staircase. After they went down about ten flights, several young, exhausted fire fighters passed them on their way up. They asked Al and Ann if they had seen anyone else on the upper floors who needed help.
“No. Everybody we’ve seen is making it down OK,” Al said as the rescuers trudged past them to the next floor. “You shouldn’t go up there. The fire shot down an open elevator shaft on the seventy-seventh floor and is spreading fast.”
“You’re probably right, but we’ve got to see for ourselves,” said one of the fire fighters as he wiped the sweat from his brow. The heat was now much more intense than it had been and the sickening odor of jet fuel was getting stronger, making it more difficult to breathe. “By the way, another commercial jet crashed into the other twin tower about ten minutes ago. This was no accident,” said one of the firefighters, who was already up the stairs and out of sight, just before the door on the next landing slammed behind them.
“Were they kidding?” Ann’s lips trembled.
“Why would they?” Al turned and waved his hand to get her moving again.
Ann tapped Al’s shoulder to stop him and looked into his busy eyes. “Thank you for saving my life.”
“I hope it’s more than just a reprieve,” replied Al as he waved his hand again and continued down the stairs.
They walked as fast as they could under the circumstances. The temperature was now over one hundred degrees, the jet fuel fumes more intense, and the stairwell was pitch black. Holding on to the handrails helped them determine when they got to each landing so they wouldn’t trip or fall. In the darkness, they heard people crying out in pain and fear from time to time.
Al and Ann had been carrying their jackets over their shoulders to get some relief from the heat. When they got to the sixtieth floor, they carefully placed their jackets in the corner of the landing because carrying them now was more trouble than they were worth. Hopefully nobody would trip over them in the corner.
Their race against time and for their lives was slowed when they came upon a group of firefighters carrying down a disabled man in a wheelchair. They followed them for five flights until the firefighters stopped to rest. Al couldn’t imagine how they were able to carry the man down when he himself was so weak from the intense heat and the dizzying fumes that just carrying his jacket was too much.
“Keep going,” panted the firefighter closest to Al as he pulled Al’s arm around him and the invalid. As Al and Ann squeezed their way past them, they heard the man in the wheelchair tell the firefighters, “Please, save yourselves. I don’t want you to die because of me.”
“Peter, Peter, Peter. How many times do we have to tell you? We’re not leaving you,” one of the firefighters said just before a scream rang out from an upper floor.
Al and Ann lost track of the floor they were on, but according to Al’s lighted watch, they’d been on the stairs forty-five minutes, going on three hours. It was the longest forty-five minutes of Al’s life because he knew their chances of getting out alive were slipping with each passing minute, and he had no idea how many more minutes they would need to escape. He focused on keeping a positive perspective for him and Ann, who had tears in her voice when she said, “I don’t want to die.”