Novel & Cerita I Survived 9/11

The phone rang, and when someone finally picked up, the operator's voice came through, "911, what’s your emergency?" I hesitated for a moment, a single tear rolling down my cheek as I prepared to speak. "I killed someone," I confessed, the weight of my words hanging heavily in the air. There was a pause on the other end as if she was processing what I had just said, and it felt like an eternity before she responded.

Then it suddenly struck me, this was far from being my home. The events of the previous night suddenly came rushing back to my head in a heavy rush. I could remember signing the divorce papers and leaving the house wandering through the cold street before the loud noise from behind then I crashed into a hard surface and passed out. If I could recall everything that happened then it only meant one thing... I wasn't dead, I survived through the cold street of New York. That was such a relief. But then, just when I was about relaxing back to take a deep breath, a loud bang screeched through my head.

That was his version of agreeing with them. Something inside me cracked. "Stop it." All three of them looked up. "Stop treating me like I'm made of glass. I'm pregnant, not dying. I have been kidnapped, beaten, chased, shot at, and nearly killed more times than I can count. I survived Travis. I survived Lana. I survived Vance's people. I survived everything that has been thrown at me since this started and I did it while standing right next to all of you." Nobody answered.

Not just a name. Not just a stranger behind poetic letters. But a man who came for me. A man who stayed. I wasn’t okay. But I was alive. And I was starting to believe I could be more than what happened to me.

After a long pause, I finally managed to straighten up. I could hardly believe it. Not only had I survived, but I was also not even badly hurt. When the beam fell, I had been sure that my back would snap. Even now, remembering that feeling of helpless terror still made my heart race. Back then, no one could hear me, no matter how loudly I cried out.

When the Program told me I could return, I felt no joy. Only emptiness. The next time I opened my eyes, I was staring at a white hospital ceiling. Machines beeped beside me, and my throat burned as if I had been asleep for years. A nurse saw me wake and rushed over. “You’re safe,” she said. “You were caught in a dockside explosion. Sophia Lane didn’t survive.” My fingers tightened against the sheet. Sophia was dead. Before I could speak, the nurse added, “There was another survivor. A young man named Luca. He woke up this morning.”

I cleared the hoarseness out from my throat and carried on with my speech "I survived that day and it was day two. Sure I got drugged a lot. Ifae add up the times,it'll make up a whole day that I was out due to those drugs. A day? Maybe even two. I thought each time should be my last, I mean maybe they injected ten mils more just so I'll die through my sleep, then I'll wake up the next morning and the morning after, it's been nine fucking days. I survived two raids. Two raids with machine guns,grenades, bombs even. I crossed a tunnel, something I have never done and I doubt I would've ever did." I stopped to laugh. Now that I think of it this was a fucking weird adventure on my part. "I don'

Small records of a man refusing to stop counting, refusing to stop believing I was coming back. My throat tightened. "I thought you should have it," he said quietly. "As a reminder that we made it through." I ran my thumb across the marked days. Each one a small act of survival. Each one proof of something I hadn't always been sure of during the worst of it was that there was someone on the other side still holding the thread. "I'll keep this forever," I said.

Then, with a hesitant, careful motion, his hand came up. He rested his palm on the back of my head. It was a heavy, grounding weight. "I don't know exactly what happened back in New York, Evie," he said softly. He paused, his voice vibrating through my skull. "But I know this: you’re a goddamn fighter. You survived it. You walked away and started over in a city where you didn't know a soul. That takes more strength than most people have in a lifetime." He lowered his head slightly, his breath warm against my hair.

Sylvia cries quietly into a handkerchief for the last five minutes while maintaining that she has something in her eye. I sit at the long dining table with the chandelier throwing light across the silver and the good china, my son asleep upstairs, my grandmother luminous with pride across from me, and I think: I did not die on that sidewalk in New York. Someone chose to stop. Someone chose to help. I chose to survive, and then I chose to rebuild, and now I am sitting here and the life around me is real and warm and mine. I am only just getting started.