I was up at 5:00 am that fateful day. That morning I was a bleary-eyed 3rd year medical student in the University of California at Davis Medical Center at Sacramento, California, doing my surgery rounds with the team, trying my best to appear excited and motivated to learn about surgery at such an ungodly time of day. We started surgery rounds at 6 am California time, and in my half awake state, little did I know just how often I would relive the events of that day. As we went from bed to bed, all the patients seemed to be watching the news. At first it appeared as if it was “just” an airplane crash, but the horror struck me right in the guts as I saw the blaze of smoke spreading on the first building and later I saw smoke on the second building. I asked a colleague how many people worked in those two buildings and when I heard “about 40,000″ I felt so sick to my stomach that I had to excuse myself from the team to let the tears fall silently for the lives irrevocably shattered by the tragedy. I was supposed to meet my surgery supervisor at 7am, but was unable to tear myself away from the large screen in the operating room where a fairly large crowd of green clad surgeons was huddling in tense bunches. The atmosphere was intense, electric, hushed. As we watched CNN Live, one building crumbled. I remember hypnotically staring at the screen not comprehending what I was watching. I glanced at my watch. I was very late for my meeting and was likely going to be in trouble for this, but simply could not tear myself away from my vantage point. I had a leaden feeling in my abdomen and remember my pulse throbbing in my face. Suddenly, to my chagrin, I noted the chief surgeon standing beside me and thought that maybe he was about to chastise me for being late for our meeting. I turned to him to apologize, but noticed that he had tears in his eyes and that his eyes, like mine, were riveted to the television images. I asked if he was “okay”, struck by his stricken face and tears. He said “my brother works in that building” as he pointed to the building still left standing. A few minutes later I stood next to him and we watched his brother’s building crumble into the dust. He stayed rooted in his spot, gazing incomprehensibly at the screen. That moment will live with me forever, the remembrance of the anguish in his face as he witnessed an event which caused the presumed death of his brother. He told me later that he tried all morning to contact his brother but had been unable to reach him. The rest of the morning passed in a blur of surgery work, with little time to process what I had just witnessed. I remember my incredible sense of joy later in the afternoon, when I learned from him that his brother missed death by leaving the building for coffee just before the first plane hit…
Fast forward ten years. I am done with all my formal medical training. The training in understanding the anguish, passions and emotions of others has become my calling, and I learn more every day I hear a new story from my patients. I work as a child psychiatrist, helping children who are often victims of trauma. “How can you do this work?” others often ask me. And my answer often is, “If I don’t, who will? Someone has to”. I love my job. I really do. For, horrible through trauma is, it is the healing and moving on, the sense of companionship with others the need to never ever take anyone or anything for granted, the ability to take that first step into the light out of the mindless catastrophic murky soup of terror, the sense of optimism we can all access… That is the true victory of shared human experience. I went home that day and hugged my mother very tightly and told her how much she meant to me. We cried together. I felt closer to her than I had ever felt before. It was something I had never done before that horrible day.
These, to me, are the biggest lessons of 9/11. These, and the importance of making time for the simple things in life… like taking a break and going out for a cup of coffee once in a while…