I Survived 9/11 Novels & Stories

She immediately video-called. “Girl! Tell me!” “They agreed.” She screamed. “I can’t wait to have you back,” she said, voice trembling. “I missed you too.” After the call ended, I stood in front of the mirror. New York. The city that broke me. The city that built me. “I’m coming back,” I whispered. This time, I wasn’t the broken girl who ran away. I was the woman who survived. If New York tried to destroy me again… I wouldn’t be the one losing.

I said. "Yes," Julian agreed. "But you've survived harder." He was right, I had survived harder. I'd survived the divorce, the miscarriage, my father's betrayal, Ethan's cruelty. I'd survived last night's attack. I could survive one interview. "Okay," I said, more to myself than to Julian. "I can do this." "I know you can," Julian replied.

You could still see some of the smoke lingering from the left over piles. I turned around and walked to my house, and to my basement. I looked over the video recordings of over the last few days, watching as everyone picked up bits and pieces of debris, and before that them pulling me back right after the blast and where I fell. The way the blast hit me you would have thought I was a goner. Face first, flying backwards. Just ugly.

It's been six weeks since that concrete scraped my spine, since his blade pierced deep into my flesh—missing my vitals, since my own blood warmed the prison yard. And in the interval of these six weeks, I woke up to the realization that I was not just a lucky man to be alive, but I was a survivor. Days passed with me looking up to the ceiling, tears staining my cheeks as I imagined what life would have been if I was still a freeman. The mobility journey was another type of pain to bear, but somehow and always, I managed to conquer. And with this new healing, came the fall of my attacker. I'll be damned if I didn't see proof of his mortality.

I hadn't prepared for this moment. I wasn't prepared. Since the "safe house," I had been trained to be ready for anything. Kidnapped by the U.S. government, I could escape. Left stranded in a desert, I could survive. Abandoned in Antarctica, I could live. Strapped to a chair with a bomb, I could save my life. Stranded on an island, I could get back. Bound and anchored to the bottom of the sea, I could free myself.

The last time he spoke to her was on 11 September at half past seven in the morning, when she told him they was boarding the American Airlines Flight 11, which departed from Logan Airport in Boston to the city of Los Angeles. He witnessed how that flight crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center, without knowing it was the flight of his wife and children. Having breakfast a few blocks away, he felt the rumble of the plane’s turbines and then he saw how it slammed into the immense building. The horror he felt at that moment couldn’t be compared to anything he had lived. The desperation of people on the streets, emergency services moving, the building on fire, everything to him wa

Hyperventilating. I moved closer. Slowly. Carefully. "Look at me. Please. Just—just look at me." She did. Eyes wide. Terrified. But looking. I reached out. Cupped her face. Let her feel me. Solid. Real. Alive. "I'm here. I'm real. I'm alive. I know—I know you saw me fall. I know you thought I was dead. But I'm here. I survived. I came back. I—" "How?" The word came out broken. Desperate. "How did you survive that fall? How are you—"

He’d lost his father and brother when the Twin Towers collapsed, then went on to save a half-dozen or so other rescuers from a falling beam, only to have that same beam crush his spine. What the hell was he doing mopping floors in a grade school in the middle of Texas? “I could ask you the same question.” Carlucci glanced around sharply, as if to check and make sure no one was listening. “What do you mean?” “I mean, I know who you are. Nick Carlucci, firefighter, 9/11.” “If you’d keep that to yourself, I’d appreciate it,” Carlucci said. “Around here I’m just Nick the janitor.”

"But I am." And I was. Because I had survived worse than this. And Richard Morrison was about to find out exactly what that meant.

"Ever since you came back after your accident, you've been scared of a lot of things so what else are you scared of now Caden?" Noah stared at me but I don't say a word. Not because I don't want to but because I don't want to give into his rage baiting to escalate the matter. "I survived near death Jared," I spoke out after a while and everyone went silent. "When you were all here having a wonderful time, I was fighting for my life not sure if I would wake up to see another day and even though I am traumatized by a lot of things right now, there's one thing I proud of."