By Greg Schain
Daily Bruin Reporter
NEW YORK : I always see the pictures on the nightly news: terror
in Israel, Turkey, Iran and Iraq. Hundreds dead. Buildings
destroyed. People crying.
Their whole families dead in an instant.
I would be sad for a minute, but quickly move on with my day and
put the tragedy out of my mind. It was sad, but it was so far away.
I couldn’t relate to it.
Then 9 a.m. came on Tuesday. You’ve seen the pictures. You know
what happened.
My sister and father, both working in Manhattan, found their way
from the tragedy back to my suburban Westchester home. My dad, who
works for the electric company, had to go back to work Wednesday.
He went to his office on 14th Street, but had to cut the workday
short.
He has a minor sinus infection, but the air quality was so low
in Manhattan that he became short of breath, dizzy and broke into a
cold sweat.
Thousands of dead bodies, smoke and asbestos everywhere will
ruin the air in a city.
He stayed overnight in the hospital, but has been released.
Others won’t be so lucky. About 5,000 people, an
incomprehensible figure, won’t ever be able to hug their loved ones
again.
They are gone. Killed by heartless terrorists.
I went to visit my father in Mother Cabrini Hospital on 19th
Street in lower Manhattan. Manhattan was in even worse shape than
my father. In a million years, I never thought I would see anything
like it.
Military trucks lined Lexington Avenue. Streets were closed.
Police and army cadets were everywhere. Sirens were blaring at all
times, rushing people to hospitals.
After we visited my father in the hospital, my mother, sister,
her boyfriend and I went out to dinner. We went to a burger joint
my dad had recommended, called Pete’s Tavern. We walked in and TVs
were on, all turned to the inescapable coverage of the tragedy. All
the New Yorkers in the restaurant were as concerned and depressed
as me.
I tried eating, but I wasn’t hungry. Who could think about food
at a time like this? Food was insignificant. Meaningless. The only
things that mattered were the victims and the rescuers.
The rescuers are the true heroes. Michael Jordan might be a
great basketball player, but he doesn’t save lives like the
firefighters, police officers and thousands of volunteers.
After we left the restaurant, I was standing on a street corner,
waiting to cross when I heard more bad news out of the radio that
belonged to the cop next to me. The Hilton, 1 Liberty Plaza, a
building I have been in many times, had collapsed.
More bad news. More tragedy. More reason to be depressed.
We went back to my father’s hospital room, on the ninth floor of
Cabrini.
I looked out the window, and saw the puff of smoke rising from
where the World Trade Center once stood. It looks horrible on TV.
It looks 10 times worse in person.
One of the nurses in the room saw me looking out the window. She
said that she always looked out this window and saw the Twin
Towers.
Not anymore. It’s all rubble and ashes and dead bodies now.
My dad is doing much better, but the world is in the same
miserable shape it’s been in since Tuesday morning. I wish I could
rewind time, to 8:30 a.m. Tuesday, when the world was a much
simpler, happy place. When America was invincible.
But I can’t. Now all those horrible scenes I used to watch from
overseas have hit home. Too close to home. And the world as I know
it will never be the same.