Wednesday . September 11 . 2002 . 7:35am |
tuesday . september 11 . 2001 . 8:45am It's a Tuesday morning, and I am in the OR, watching some kid get circumcised. Halfway though the procedure, one of the nurses bursts in from outside, and I mean bursts in, as opposed to entering soundlessly and unobtrusively we all usually try to do (except for the head surgeons--they always burst in). And as if that isn't shocking enough, she then says something absolutely unbelievable: "Someone just crashed a plane into one of the Twin Towers." What we all think instantly at this moment was of a small, one engine plane, a tiny Cessna maybe, that had somehow gotten lost, spiraled out of control, and clipped a wing on the edge of the building. "Cancel my reservation at Windows on the World!" the head surgeon jokes bluffly, and a few people chuff or make the facsimile of laughter, to appease him. I don't say anything, but look to Bob, another medical student in the room, and make my wide, I-can't-believe-he-just-said-that eyes at him--eyes being the only way one can silently and motionlessly communicate from behind a surgical mask. I figure that even if it was just a tiny little plane, there had to have been at least some damage, and at least one or two people must have gotten hurt. The circumcision continues. The same nurse now bursts in again, louder this time, and before she's even fully through the swinging double doors, screams, "Someone just flew a plane into the other Tower! It's on fire!" And still, even then, I think that it must be some mistake. Some air traffic directing mishap, maybe, or an obscuring cloud of smog, even though I know as much as anyone else who walked to work that the day outside was brilliantly sunny and clear, the epitome of Indian summer. It never crosses my mind that it wasn't an accident. It never occurs to me that someone could have done this on purpose. The nurse is now giving us updates, from the live newscasts she had been watching out in the patient waiting room. They were huge, passenger planes. They had flown directly into the Towers. The top floors are burning. People are trapped. We're wide-eyed, digesting this information, when another nurse bursts into the room. "Another plane just crashed into the Pentagon!" "Jesus Christ," the head surgeon mutters. This is no joke. This is no accident. The first thought in my mind is: I have to call my family. Somehow, we finish with the case, the kid gets bandaged up, and we wheel him to Recovery. One of the residents come with me and Bob to take the elevator to the 10th floor, so that we can walk over the skybridge and get a view of what's going on in Lower Manhattan, more than 200 blocks away. This is the last time I will ever see the Twin Towers. From our vantage point, they look like two giant smokestacks, steaming, with choking black plumes billowing to one side, obscuring the tops of the buildings. We are too far uptown to feel the effects. We are too far away to see the people. I call home. Somewhere is the irrational fear that someone from my family is down there, in all the smoke and fire. My little sister may have been on a field trip to the World Trade Center. My parents may be at their downtown office. I call again and again. Each time, the lines are busy. It has been decided that we are to take one last surgical case for today, before all elective cases are cancelled. The hospital is to be on crisis alert. Throughout the hospitals, all but the sickest are being cleared from the ERs and ward beds. Beds are being shifted in the ICUs to make room for the wounded. We move through our last case in a daze. I don't remember the patient's name, but I do remember not envying his position. Who wants to be a patient in the OR when all the surgeons are thinking about anything and everything but you and your undescended testicle? The nurse bursts in one last time. "They collapsed. The Towers collapsed." And of course, I don't believe her. The patient is in the Recovery Room, and we're in the anesthesia lounge watching footage of the Towers collapsing again and again and again, and I still don't believe it. "People were jumping out of the windows," one of the anesthesiologists says, almost to herself. Bob and I go back up to the 10th floor skybridge. The smoke is still there, but the Towers are gone. The hospital is on alert. Everyone, from attendings to residents to medical students, have been briefed. We feel charged with a purpose. We can help! We can save! There is a sign-up desk in a room adjacent to the cafeteria, where med students are to leave their names, pager numbers, and list the first-aid maneuvers they are able to perform. I lie a little, and tell them that I can draw blood and start IVs, even though the only blood I've ever drawn has been off another med student's arm, and the only IV I've ever put in is into a plastic mannequin. I want so much to be allowed to help. We all do. I call home. My dad is fine, at home. My sisters are at both at school, one on the Upper East Side, one in Massachusets. My mom is at work, in Chinatown. I order her over the phone to stay at her office until things outside calm down. I pray that she listens to me, just for once. I am so thankful to hear their voices. I am so wildly thankful to have them, to know that they are well, and alive, on a day where so many are not, and all else seems uncertain. I make a mental note to, in the future, be more grateful for these small things, these assumed tautologies. My family is alive. Nothing bad has happen to them. In the hospital is chaos. People from all over the neighborhood are pouring into the lobby, wanting to give blood, wanting donate time, wanting to help, help, help. The only thing missing are patients. We may be the hospital in New York farthest away from the Financial Center, and as we listen to the radio, hearing requests from St. Vincent's, a tiny hospital in Greenwich Village--could any doctors with experience in trauma or plastic surgery please come down to our ER, we need extra hands--we groan. We have the resources, our hospital is huge, there's just no way we can get there. The city is on terror alert. All roads are closed. Some doctors jump on bikes, get rides with police, and go downtown anyway. I walk by the Orthopedics conference room. There, residents are already taking Cipro. If there's anthrax on the way, they want to be ready. I think--they, of all people, should know better than to prophylax. I meet up with a few med students and walk outside. Outside, the day is dazzlingly bright, and up in our neighborhood, everything is surprisingly normal. People are walking out on the street. Business is going on as usual. The only clue that things are wrong are the police barricades on either side of the block outside the ER, keeping the roads to the ambulance bay open in case any casualties should be sent our way. We run over to the bagel shop to grab something to eat. We want to be ready when the patients start coming up. Back inside, we walk up to the surgical floor, and Mayor Giuliani is speaking on television. He tells us that in the end, the losses from the tragedy will be "more than we can bear." He looks shaken. He looks like he's ready to cry. I am too. Downstairs, the ER is packed, but there are hardly any patients. Attendings, residents, and interns from all fields fill every corner of the room, and sit in watchful wait. Waiting for the injured. Waiting to help. We have been instructed to stay uptown, to stay at our own hospital, where we can be of most use. Downtown is chaos, we hear. We would only be aggravating the situation to try and head downtown. We're doing as we've been told. So why do we all feel so impotent? Over the phone, over the radio, we hear about the situation from other hospitals. St. Vincent's and NYU are busy, but further uptown, Roosevelt has yet to receive any patients, and St. Luke's hasn't heard from anyone either. A good fifty blocks uptown from St. Luke's, we continue to wait. A quiet voice can be heard from across the ER: "We're not going to get anyone up here today. Anyone who survived all that is going to too critical to tolerate a half-hour ambulance ride up here. We may get some transfers for surgery after they're stabilized. But not today." And so we keep waiting. And waiting. It's now 7:00pm and still, no one has come up. A resident comes up to us and gently encourages us to go home, they'll page us if they need assistance later on. I live just across the street, I tell him, so I can get here in just a few minutes, just page, let me know if there's any way I can help, I really want to help. The resident is silent, and then looks around. There are no patients in the ER. There were no miraculous pulls out from the rubble for us to work on, no casualties for us to bandage and splint, so that in doing our work, we could quiet the aching sadness in our own heads that such a thing could happen, that any plot could be so diabolical, and that we were not able to save, to temper the magnitude of all that suffering, that we were not able to be there for those who needed us. There are simply too few who survived. Doctors without patients feel useless. I walk home slowly, and the sun is setting. The ambulance bay is empty and waiting, as it will continue to be all night. |
