Valuable lessons from Dante’s life and writing

Since 13–14 September 2026 is Dante’s 705th Jahrzeit (death anniversary), let’s reflect on some of the valuable lessons and messages he imparts through his writing and life. It can’t be said enough how timeless a figure he is, truly transcending the 13th and 14th centuries, with one foot firmly in the modern era.

1. Many times in life, we find ourselves lost in a dark forest, with the right path appearing not anywhere, but the most important thing is to never lose hope. We can always find our way back to happiness and normalcy.

2. When we’re lost in that dark forest, we can’t journey out alone. We need our own Virgil, Statius, Matilda, Beatrice, and St. Bernard of Clairvaux who can guide, mentor, help, and assist us.

3. Sometimes a mentor can only take us so far before entrusting us to someone better equipped to lead us the rest of the way, like how Virgil parts company with Dante at the top of Mount Purgatory.

4. Our mentor wouldn’t have stepped back if s/he didn’t trust we’d sufficiently grown more confident and prepared for the future under his or her tutelage. Virgil’s last words in the Commedia are “I crown and mitre you lord of yourself!”

5. Someone who lived long before you can provide positive, life-changing inspiration. Virgil passed away 1,283 years before Dante was born, but that didn’t stop Dante from regarding Virgil as his idol and great literary master. In turn, Dante left this world 658 years before I was born, which makes him much closer to me than he was to Virgil.

6. You want to find someone who loves you enough to leave his or her footprints on the floor of Hell to save you, as Beatrice does for Dante.

7. We should only stand in fear of things with the power to hurt us, as Beatrice explains to Virgil about why she’s not scared to tread into Hell.

8. Unhappiness comes from forcing yourself to pursue a profession you feel no passion for and have no aptitude for. Some of us are called to be writers and poets, while others are meant to be doctors, lawyers, clergy, farmers, politicians, or bakers. (I suspect the final lines of Canto VIII of Paradiso are also cathartic venting about his father’s disapproval of his predilection for poetry instead of business!)

9. When you have a lucky number that keeps naturally occurring in your life, be proud of it! Dante never missed an opportunity to incorporate the number nine into his prose or find connections to it in his life.

10. No one ever gained fame through sitting on down cushions or lying under coverlets, and if you leave this world without any fame, your legacy will be as foam in water or smoke in the air. Virgil says this to Dante in Canto XXIV of Inferno, rebuking him for collapsing of exhaustion and wanting to sit down during the strenuous, difficult climb up the rocks of the Seventh Ring of the Eighth Circle of Hell.

11. Make yourself like a sturdy tower that doesn’t fall even when the strongest wind blows, as Virgil entreats Dante in Canto V of Purgatorio.

12. If you believe in Purgatory or a similar concept of a penitential waiting room in the afterlife, don’t be deterred from ongoing atonement for sins and wrongdoings in the earthly realm because you’re nervous about the penance that might be waiting for you. In Canto X of Purgatorio, Dante directly addresses his readers (one of twenty-one times total he does this through the entire Commedia) and tells us not to lose heart, since there’s a great reward waiting for us when the punishment is over, and it can’t last longer than Judgment Day.

13. Owning your own weaknesses and struggles with sin is half the battle. Dante isn’t shy about point-blank admitting the deadly sin he struggles the most with is pride, and says he knows he’ll be back on the First Terrace, for the prideful. when it’s his time to cross over. I likewise make no bones about wrath being my biggest challenge!

14. Many of the people in Purgatory committed the same sins as people in Hell, but they’re not being punished with eternal damnation because they took responsibility for their behaviour instead of blaming other people, dying unrepentant, or engaging in those acts with evil motivations. Genuine atonement makes such a difference.

15. We should always try to find the good in everyone and listen to their side of the story. They might turn out to be total dirtbags like Count Ugolino, but we should save the condemnation until after we’ve heard them explain themselves. Dante expresses sympathy for many of the other souls he meets in Hell, despite the sins they’ve committed. The ones he tends to relate most strongly to and feel most pity for are the ones whose acts remind him of his own shortcomings and moral failings.

16. It’s okay to question and challenge things in our religion. Many times in the Commedia, Dante takes issue with the traditional Catholic belief that only baptised Christians could attain Paradise, even if they lived more righteous lives than some so-called Christians, lived before Jesus, or lived in parts of the world where Christianity had no presence. He also makes his next-fave poet Statius a secret Christian, gives Emperor Trajan postmortem conversion, makes Cato the guardian of the entrance to Purgatory, and places the great lights of Antiquity in a beautiful castle in Limbo. Even more unusually for the era, he places three Muslims, Sultan Saladin, Avicenna, and Averroes, in Limbo with his other non-Christian idols.

17. Taking no sides, for either good or evil, is morally abhorrent. Dante is disgusted by these souls in Ante-Inferno, who’ve been rejected by all three afterlives. Even the worst sinners in Hell own what they did and feel justified in choosing evil instead of passively blowing whichever way the wind blew them.

18. When we leave enough of a mark in the world, our names shall be spoken long after we’ve left this world, and our memories will endure as long as world there is.

19. Dante chose the exact midway point of the Commedia to deliver the powerful message “Light has been given you for right or wrong,” and a few lines later elaborated, “So if the world today has gone astray, the cause lies in you, in you it must be sought.” Though everything is foreseen till the end of time, we nevertheless have free will to choose to do good or evil, and if something’s going wrong in our lives, we have the power to change the situation and turn things around.

20. And last but certainly not least, no matter how low we fall, we can always rise back up. We tend to appreciate things more when we’ve been in the lowest, saddest place possible and had to struggle to regain our bearings.

Sunday Snippets—Peacock wedding cape

Though the long-running Weekend Writing Warriors seems to be officially over for all intents and purposes, I’ve decided to keep its spirit alive by sharing my own snippets on Sundays. There are no more rules about a certain number of lines, so we get to decide how much to include now!

Since 13–14 September is Dante’s 705th death anniversary, I’m sharing a snippet from my hiatused alternative history A Dream of Peacocks. It’s now November 1288, and Dante has outfitted himself in a grand wedding outfit and had his hair cut shorter than expected due to a barbering mishap.

Tana is his much-younger halfsister Gaetana, who’ll eventually be going into exile with him and his three daughters.

Tana looked up at me and stared for several very long moments. “What happened to your hair?”

“Galfrido cut it. I wanted it to be a bit longer, but he made a mistake and had to style it at this length instead. Do you like it?”

“You look really different, but in a good way. It makes your face look even kinder and more intelligent, since your hair is like a frame around it and emphasizes your best features. You also look more distinguished and mature now.”

I ran my hands through my hair, once again startled to feel only empty air below the middle of my neck. “Molte grazie. I never considered myself handsome, but we’re usually not the best judges of our own selves.”

“I like the peacock on the back of your cape too. Did you ask for it, or did the embroiderer choose it herself?”

I took a moment to compose myself, but my voice broke regardless when I responded. “When I was growing inside my mother’s womb, she had an early-morning dream about giving birth under a laurel tree by a spring. Soon after I was born, I ate the berries and drank from the spring. Then I turned into a peacock. My mother believed that dream was a portent of future greatness for me, though I know not what future glories God has prepared for me. This peacock represents my mother’s presence at my wedding, and her approval of my union with Bice. My entire life long, even if I’m destined to live over one hundred like St. Anthony the Great, I shall never forget her or stop loving her.” As I uttered these words, my voice completely broke, and I pressed my hands over my face.

Tana embraced me from the side and rested her head against my ribcage. “She must love you from Paradise too. My new theology tutor says spirits can watch and know about things happening in the earthly kingdom.”

“Yes, they do,” I managed to say. “Mamma taught me that memory prevents us from being wholly dead. We still speak reverently of many people who left the world thousands of years ago. Their good works and legacies shall endure as long as world there is. Someday we’ll be as far away in time from the living as Virgil and Christ are from us, but if our descendants still revere, respect, and love us, we’ll feel as alive to them as if our bones had never turned to dust.”

“Kind of like how the Sun and stars still shine really brightly over six thousand years after God put those beautiful things in the sky?”

I patted her shoulder. “Yes, carissima, it’s exactly like that. Love keeps bright lights alive and in motion forever.”

Charlotte’s Most Terrifying Prophecy (12:30–2:00 PM)

During this week of the 25th anniversary of 9/11, I’m sharing “Charlotte’s Most Terrifying Prophecy,” from my magnum opus Cinnimin, in installments. These posts are much longer than usual, but they’re all split into sections as the story is told montage-style. It goes without saying that there’s an extreme content warning for graphic depictions of the events of that day!

The Lower Hudson River piers were swarmed with crowds so numerous Mancika couldn’t see the waterline. Thousands upon thousands upon thousands of people stretched out in a line that seemed to go on around the entire bottom tip of the island, standing and sitting at least a dozen deep. Many of the other domestic refugees were also coated in that foul dust, and the incessant smell was barely less strong than it had been at the heartbreaking hypocenter.

“Would you like some bottled water?” a middle-aged woman in an official-looking uniform asked. “We also have medical masks.”

“Some good a damn mask will do me now, after hours of breathing in that stench.” Mancika tried to keep a level tone of voice, knowing this volunteer was just trying to help, though she desperately wanted to snarl. “It won’t magically cleanse my lungs, nostrils, and throat or take away the cough I’ve had all day.”

“No, it can’t reverse what’s already happened, but it can minimize further side effects.”

“Wouldn’t the dust immediately get into the water?” Ammiel asked. “That stuff is everywhere.”

Mancika set down the grocery bags and grabbed a seventeen-ounce bottle of Poland Spring from the box. Predictably, the dust coated on her fingers got all over the cap when she untwisted it, but it weren’t as though she’d be licking it. She tilted the bottle slightly and angled it entirely inside of her mouth, to minimize the chance of it coming into any contact with that frightening dust still floating through the air.

“Would anyone here like to appear on camera?”

Mancika turned in the direction of a dust-covered man and woman, respectively holding a videocamera and a Nikon film camera. “Take a picture of me! The entire world needs to see exactly what happened today, while the evidence is still fresh! I won’t change clothes or wash myself until someone, anyone, documents this!” She began heavily coughing.

The woman took several pictures of her and Ammiel while the man wiped off his camera and turned it on. Without any prompting, Mancika breathlessly narrated the events of her terror-stricken morning, all the while fighting her urge to vomit all over again. These experiences were all so surreally, nightmarishly, monstrously macabre, they seemed more like the stuff of a horror movie than things which had actually happened to her in real life. She still didn’t entirely believe they really had transpired. If she closed her eyes long enough, she might fall asleep and then presently awaken to discover the last few hours were just a mad dream, with everything exactly as it should be. By the time she concluded her story with the near-disaster in the flaming rubble, she was ready to climb into a magical hatch leading to another world and never return to this frightening new world that had such ugly things in it.

“I don’t want to imagine what might’ve happened if I hadn’t found her at exactly that moment.” Ammiel’s voice broke, and he tightly put one arm around her shoulders and the other around her waist. “Manci’s been my best friend for seven years, and losing her would break me. I’d never recover from that.”

The reporter thanked Mancika for sharing her story and then continued on down the line in search of more interview subjects, while the photographer canvassed in the other direction. As soon as they were gone, Mancika began heavily coughing again.

“A boat will be here before we know it,” Ammiel said as he took two medical masks out of another box. “We’ll still see and smell this inferno from the Jersey side, but by the end of the day, we’ll be in a much nicer place, where the wind won’t carry.”

“Where is this mystery haven exactly?” Mancika slipped the mask over her mouth and nose. “Are you taking me to a resort you can’t afford?”

“Wilhelm will explain everything.” Ammiel looked around to see if Wilhelm’s family were approaching. “I can’t tell you anything more, since it’d ruin the surprise. But believe me, you’ll really, really like it. I wouldn’t take you anywhere if I thought it were a bad idea. As primitive and uncharacteristic as this sounds, it’s my manly duty to take care of you. I’m not the passive milksop your father thinks I am. This is a serious emergency that demands fast, decision actions, not something we’re just watching on TV a hundred miles away. Now isn’t the time to sit around debating politics and philosophy. Frankly, I don’t care what motivated the criminals who did this. Civilians are never legitimate targets.”

“I’m glad you took charge of the situation,” Mancika admitted. “If you hadn’t shown up, I’d probably still be digging through the rubble or aimlessly wandering the streets. I wouldn’t recognize you if you suddenly morphed into an alpha male, but I like this new side of you. Previously unknown strengths often emerge in a crisis.”

***

As the fog of anesthesia cleared, Raizel was hit by a wave of nausea, grogginess, sore throat, and dry mouth. Her eyelids were so weighted down by that artificially-induced sleep she had just awoken from, she could barely keep them open even a sliver. She also suddenly felt unusually cold, and the intense throbbing ache in her legs had been replaced by a funny feeling she couldn’t quite place, a dull pain mixed with the uncomfortable, strange new sensation of foreign objects in her bones. Her ribs also still hurt.

“Where am I?” She struggled to get the words out without slurring or speaking too slowly.

“You’re in the recovery room,” a nurse informed her. “My name is Kim. Do you remember what the name of this hospital is?”

“NYU Downtown Hospital.”

“Do you know what day it is?”

“The eleventh of September.”

“And what is your name?”

“Raizel Hinda Brandt-van Acker. I thought I had leg surgery, not brain surgery.”

“Everyone coming out of surgery has to answer a few basic questions to make sure they’re okay and can be moved into a patient room. Would you like some extra blankets?”

“Yes, please. I’m so cold.”

Kim opened a cupboard and brought over several blankets. Though these were hardly luxury down comforters heated by a fireplace, they instantly provided warmth enough to drive away the chill and end the shivering.

“You’ll probably feel sleepy and have slowed reflexes for the next few days, but that’s perfectly normal. Sleeping a lot is very good, since your body does most of its recovery then. If you’re like most people, your energy levels will start noticeably returning one month from now, and everything will be as normal by the six-month mark. Recovery from surgery is a long, slow process.”

“Six entire months! I’m a university student! NYU will kick me out if I don’t go to school for that long!”

“I think the dean and your professors will understand why you have to take a long leave of absence,” Kim said as she filled an IV bag with morphine. “It’s not like you’re missing classes to take a vacation to Hawaii or in jail. I don’t think anyone will be ready to return to school or work tomorrow like nothing out of the ordinary just happened. Every single person in this city experienced a lot of trauma to various degrees. Trying to resume normal life too quickly is a very bad idea.”

“Can’t I at least go back to my dorm and do my work from there?” Raizel begged as the nurse put a blood pressure cuff around her right arm. “Or I could go home to West Orange and be a distance student until I fully recover. I’ll never graduate on time if I have to take off at least six months.”

Kim wrote down the blood pressure reading and stuck a thermometer under Raizel’s tongue. “More people than you might think graduate on a non-standard timetable. College isn’t like high school, where you absolutely have to finish in four years if you want a graduation ceremony and official diploma.”

“When can I see my father?” Raizel asked as Kim took her pulse. “I hope I have other visitors waiting for me too.”

Kim wrote down the pulse reading and inserted the IV needle into Raizel’s left arm. “I don’t know if anyone will be allowed visitors after today. Giuliani wants everyone except emergency workers below Canal to evacuate, and there’s no telling when they’ll be allowed back.”

“All alone in a strange hospital for six months?”

“Six months is just the standard full recovery period after surgery, not the length of time you’ll need to be here as long as everything goes well. You might be cleared to go home in six weeks.”

As Kim pushed her out of the recovery room, Raizel almost wished she’d never been found and had died in the collapse, or that she’d been delayed this morning by a bus stuck in traffic, oversleeping, waking up with a cold, missing her bus, anything that would’ve spared her from such a depressing future. When Jeremy and Leon arrived, she’d been so close to falling asleep from smoke inhalation. Had she not called out to them, they would’ve continued on up the stairs or found her dead when they searched the ninety-first floor. She’d taken them away from the job they came there to do, put out fires. They’d also lost their coats and equipment because of her, and the money to replace those important things would surely come out of their paychecks.

Another nurse was waiting in the room, along with Dr. Zeldin. Raizel closed her eyes as the nurses transferred her from the gurney to the bed and rearranged her blankets. She barely paid attention when the other nurse introduced herself as Wendy and pointed out the personal effects that had been brought into the room. This room might as well be a prison cell.

“Have you seen your external fixators yet?” Dr. Zeldin asked. “You’ll have them for about eight weeks, and a nurse will clean the pins and replace the dressings once a day to prevent bone infection. Your legs must always remain elevated, and the pins can’t come into contact with any liquids except the cleaning solution. It’s also not a good idea to wear clothing over them, due to the risk of snagging, rubbing, and pulling.”

“Couldn’t I just get casts like a normal person?” Raizel asked.

“These aren’t normal breaks. Your bones are shattered so badly from the prolonged amount of time they were pinned under such a heavy object. When that happens, bones need to be held in place with metal hardware. The only other solution is the old-fashioned one I’m sure you wouldn’t want, amputation.”

Raizel screamed when Dr. Zeldin pulled back the blankets to reveal the ugly metal contraptions encasing both of her lower legs, looking like something from out of a science-fiction horror movie. “At least with amputation I’d be able to start walking on prosthetic legs immediately! And meanwhile that psycho who crashed the plane and did this to me won’t face any consequences!”

“Believe me, you don’t wish your legs had been amputated. Modern medical technology has saved so many limbs that would’ve been amputated even forty or fifty years ago.” Dr. Zeldin checked the morphine drip. “It’s too soon to know who’s responsible for those plane crashes, but once we find out, they’ll be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. That was the worst sneak attack since Pearl Harbor.”

The door opened and Adam came in. He averted his eyes from the external fixators.

“I have to go back to Jersey soon, but I’ll stay here as long as I possibly can,” he said as he dropped into a chair by the head of the bed. “You’ll be in very good hands while you’re here, and once it’s safe for people to return to Lower Manhattan, everyone in our family will visit you every single day and bring you lots of presents. The only reason I didn’t bring you any flowers or other gifts today is because all the stores are closed.”

“Couldn’t you have signed for my legs to be amputated if they’re that badly broken, Dad?” Raizel asked in a pleading voice. “I’d rather hobble around on prosthetics for the rest of my life than suffer with these ugly things and all that complicated aftercare! Prosthetics these days are so much more advanced than they used to be.”

“Why would you want your legs to be cut off unnecessarily?” Adam asked. “I can’t pretend to know what’s going through your mind or what you went through this morning, but you must believe you’ll be out of this hospital sooner rather than later, and that you’ll be walking again by next year at this time. Doctor, will she need casts after these things come off, or can she immediately start physical therapy?”

“She’ll need splints after I remove them,” Dr. Zeldin said. “Then she’ll graduate to casts, and finally orthopedic walking boots.” He turned to Raizel. “Depending upon your progress and comfort, you may be able to use crutches or a walker with the walking boots. Being immobile for so long is never a happy feeling, but you must understand that every single day will bring you one day closer to being able to walk again, and that someday this will all seem like a long-ago nightmare. You’ll spend more of your life being able to walk than confined to a wheelchair and wearing external fixators, splints, casts, and walking boots.”

“Sometimes it feels like every day lasts a thousand years, with no end of suffering in sight,” Raizel said. “That’s how my older relatives describe their experience in concentration-camps.”

“Would you like to meet with your grandfather or talk with him over the phone to discuss this?” Adam asked. “He’s helped to heal so many other wounded minds.”

“Not if he hypnotizes me and makes me relive the worst day of my life.”

“That’s not the only thing he does with patients, and he only uses hypnosis to deeply delve into memories that are important for healing old wounds. Of course, he’ll need to be discharged from the hospital and recover his own health before he can provide psychotherapy to anyone.”

Raizel sat up as far as she could, which lessened the pain in her ribs. “Grandpa’s in the hospital? When did that happen?”

“When he saw your building collapsing on TV as we were talking on the phone, he thought you were killed, and had a heart attack or stroke of shock. I’m not sure of the specifics, since I’ve been unable to get in touch with anyone in Atlantic City. They must all be at the hospital with him.”

“We have to punish the people who did this!” Her voice rose octave by octave as she spoke. “The psychos flying the planes might be dead, but there must be other people responsible behind the scenes. Is there any news about who they are or where they’re from?”

“We can only speculate at this point,” Dr. Zeldin said. “I understand your anger at those criminals, but it’s more important for you to put your main energy into healing.” He tapped the left side of his head. “Much of the battle for recovery after a serious injury is in here. Given the chance, the body wants to heal itself, but that healing process will be a lot harder if the mind isn’t working in cooperation with the physical body. As soon as you came to this hospital, your healing began, and it’ll slowly but surely continue every single day. By next September, I guarantee you’ll be as good as new.”

“When can I start wearing my own clothes again? It’ll make me feel a lot more human and normal.”

“I left a message on the answering machine in your dorm, asking your roommate to collect your things and deliver them to the hospital,” Adam said. “Though it’ll probably be easier to wear a hospital gown for now. You shouldn’t force yourself to get right back to normal life if you’re not ready.”

“What about my broken ribs? When am I getting them casted?”

“Broken ribs physically can’t be casted,” Dr. Zeldin explained. “You’d have difficulty breathing if your ribs were encased in hard plaster, and that might lead to a collapsed lung or pneumonia. Doctors in the old days used compression wraps to treat them, but today we know better and let them heal on their own while managing and relieving pain. Luckily, yours aren’t so severely broken they need surgery and more external fixators.”

“You should sit up or be propped up as often as possible,” Wendy said. “That does a lot for reducing rib pain. An icepack would also help. I’ll get one right now.”

While Wendy went on this errand, Kim fluffed her pillows and raised the bed. Mercifully, she also pulled the hospital gown back over the hateful metal torture devices and further pulled the blankets on top of that. If Raizel didn’t have to see those things, she could try to pretend they didn’t exist.

“You have some visitors,” Wendy called outside the door. “Would you like to see them now, or would you prefer to rest for awhile? Your milkshake will also be here soon.”

“Sure, send them in,” Raizel responded.

Her eyes welled up when she saw Leon and Jeremy coming into the room, the soot now cleaned off their faces and their sweaty, sooty FDNY shirts exchanged for clean replacements. She sat up as high as she could manage and extended her arms towards them. Leon squeezed her right hand, and Jeremy squeezed her left hand.

“Who are you?” Adam asked. “I’m Raizel’s father, Adam Brandt-van Acker.”

Raizel continued holding onto their hands. “These are the heroic firemen who lifted the desk off me and carried me down ninety-one flights of stairs without taking a single break. If they hadn’t found me when they did, I never would’ve gotten out of that building.”

“We had to make sure you were safe after that cop took you the rest of the way,” Jeremy said. “I can’t believe the tower was starting to collapse while we were still inside. You saved us as much as we saved you, since if you hadn’t been in exactly that place and needed our help, we would’ve continued on up the stairs or started back down too late, with all that heavy equipment still strapped to our backs. The only reason we escaped from so high up that late is because we took off our coats and most of our equipment, and we had a clear path ahead of us for so many flights.”

“I hope you didn’t get in much trouble for losing your uniforms and supplies. It was my fault you had to take them off and forgot about them.”

Leon put his other hand on her shoulder. “After we joined back up with our company, we found out there was an order given to do just that, and an earlier order to evacuate when the first tower collapsed. Even many guys who didn’t get either order, like us, started taking off their coats and equipment so they could evacuate a lot faster. You have no idea how heavy all that is.” He turned to Adam. “I’m Leon Jefferson, and that’s Jeremy Kumiega. We’ve been firefighters for seven years, since we graduated high school, and have been best friends ever since.”

“God should bless both of you forever,” Adam declared in a shaking voice. “You saved my child’s life with incredible courage and strength. Tell me your addresses, and I’ll send you both checks and whatever gifts you want. I’m no Rockefeller or Vanderbilt, but you deserve a grand reward for rescuing Raizel when no one else did.”

“We don’t deserve any special treatments or gifts for doing our job,” Jeremy said. “Firefighters also aren’t allowed to accept monetary gifts, or any kind of gift that’s too valuable. If you really want to do something for us, you can send cards, bring some food to our firehouse for everyone to share, or donate money to a firefighting foundation.”

“Don’t just do it for us, but for all our firefighting brothers,” Leon said. “So many of us were involved in that rescue mission, and some of our brothers might’ve been killed or badly injured. We need all the support we can get.”

Adam nodded. “I’ll be more than happy to give a yearly donation to several of your charities. Will you be able to visit Raizel again? I don’t know when I’ll be able to return to the city, or when anyone will be allowed back into this part of town, and it’ll be comforting to know she’s not completely alone among strangers.”

“We work really long shifts and don’t have a lot of free time, but we’ll see what we can manage,” Jeremy said. “The experience we shared this morning is the kind of thing that creates a lifelong connection. You can count on us as regular visitors.”

“You really are my angels.” Raizel squeezed their hands even more tightly. “Your hose straps are on the side table. Not all your equipment was lost.”

“Why don’t you keep them as a souvenir?” Leon asked. “It costs so little to replace hose straps in comparison to our air packs and masks.”

“Are you sure you won’t get in trouble?”

“We assure you, the fire department suffered such a terrible loss today, our chiefs and commanders have far more important priorities than tracking down every little piece of equipment and fining surviving firefighters for leaving theirs behind.” Leon glanced at the wall clock. “Our next shift starts soon, so we can’t stay much longer. We won’t forget about visiting you as often as we can.”

“I should probably start walking to the pier too,” Adam said. “There’s probably going to be a really long wait for a boat. I hope the buses on the Jersey side weren’t suspended too.”

“Everyone really has to leave downtown?” Raizel asked. “Can’t you stay on a couch in the waiting room or something?”

He shook his head. “I wish I could, but orders are orders. The authorities are trying to prevent more casualties and get the survivors out of harm’s way. We don’t know if the fires will take over more buildings and how long that foul dust cloud will remain. It’s stunning enough I was allowed to enter this part of town to visit you.”

“Will you at least telephone every day?”

“Sure, if the lines are working. After today, I’m rethinking my former attitudes towards cellphones. They might be expensive, but they’re a necessity for communicating in emergencies. As soon as our finances allow it, your mother and I will both buy them, and we’ll get one for you too. I’ll have to do some research into the best model and make.”

Raizel finally let go of Leon and Jeremy’s hands and bid goodbye to her father by squeezing his hand. With several IVs in her left arm and broken ribs, she couldn’t hug anyone, and the ugly metal things in her legs further constrained her range of motion. Even the living torso in Freaks was more mobile than she was now. She briefly thought of begging Dr. Zeldin to let her go home with her father despite everything, then put that idea to swift rest. Leaving the hospital and going on the journey to one of the piers would mean being immersed in that toxic soup of whatever it was that had taken dictatorial possession of the air and having to look at the signs of destruction all around her. Staying in hospital for a few months wouldn’t be the world’s happiest experience, but it sure beat being thrust back out into this macabre new world that had been unleashed without warning.

Charlotte’s Most Terrifying Prophecy (11:15 AM–12:30 PM)

During this week of leading up to today’s 25th anniversary of 9/11, I’ve been sharing “Charlotte’s Most Terrifying Prophecy,” from my magnum opus Cinnimin, in installments. These posts are much longer than usual, but they’re all split into sections as the story is told montage-style. It goes without saying that there’s an extreme content warning for graphic depictions of the events of that day!

Mancika clung to Ammiel’s arm for dear life as they staggered towards the former dry goods store that housed their apartments. The entire walk up from the sprawling, stinking pile of destruction, she’d been unable to stop coughing. She hoped she didn’t have lung cancer or some other serious health issue from all the poisonous smorgasbord of debris she’d been inhaling for the last few hours. In her wildest, most hysterical nightmarish visions, her lungs and nostrils had become thickly coated with shards of glass and wood, human ashes and bone fragments, asbestos, pieces of electronics and wires, pulverized concrete, aluminum, fiberglass, and whatever else was mixed up in that foreboding mystery dust.

Heaps of dust so thick it could be cut with a knife, commingled with twisted pieces of metal, hunks of cement, and all that other debris rendered beyond recognition, were piled up all over the streets. When Mancika briefly looked down, she realized for the first time the dust was so thick it left footprints and muffled the sound of all footsteps. People walked in complete silence not just from the shellshock, but also from the physical inability to make any noises against the pavement.

Several buildings on their strip of Greenwich St. had gashes torn in them, and fires crackled inside some. Though their apartment didn’t appear to be burning or damaged, there were flames shooting through the windows of an old textile factory two doors down, and the roof of a low-rise brick artists’ studio three doors up had partially collapsed.

“May we please go inside, Officers?” Ammiel asked the NYPD cops standing outside of their apartment. “We live here, and we need to pack our things so we can evacuate. As soon as we’re packed, we’re getting out of here.”

“Have you seen my roommate?” Mancika begged. “She works at the World Trade Center. Her name’s Courtnie Elizabeth Goldfarb, and she has blue eyes and wavy blonde hair a bit above her shoulders. She’s wearing a sky-blue dress with a knee-length hemline and elbow-length sleeves, and her purse is a denim Dolce and Gabbana embroidered with flowers. I didn’t take note of her shoes, but they’re probably high-heeled sandals.”

All of the cops shook their heads.

“If your roommate got out of the building uninjured, she probably came here to grab her things as quickly as possible and then left,” an auburn-haired cop said. “You’ll find each other again as soon as all this chaos settles down. In the meantime, the two of you need to also get in and out without dawdling. Remember, the most important things to pack are necessities, valuables, and irreplaceables. You’ll have to leave your furniture and heavy objects behind.”

Mancika hated the idea of having to abandon anything she’d spent money on and buy unnecessary replacements, particularly given how money had never grown on trees for her family and they’d be even harder-off if not for the generous yearly charity check from Tikva and Giorgio. Still, she knew the most important thing was her life. She could always buy new furniture, clothes, dishes, and even books, but she couldn’t get a new life so easily.

There was no sign of Courtnie in the apartment, and she failed to respond or appear when Mancika called her name over and over. Neither had she left any notes, and the answering machine also held no clues, since all the power was out.

[Packing scene omitted in the interest of wordcount and keeping the focus squarely on the events and emotions of 9/11.]

She staggered into Courtnie’s room to check one more time for any signs of disturbance suggesting Courtnie had been there between now and this morning, or a note that had been overlooked. Once again, everything was exactly as Courtnie had left it.

As Mancika was wondering what to do about her textbooks and library books, her eyes lit upon Courtnie’s precious Nokia cellphone. Courtnie never went anywhere without that thing, and couldn’t have neglected to notice it missing after arriving at work. Perhaps she had been on her way home to retrieve it when the first plane struck. She also could’ve been waiting in one of the sky lobbies for an elevator down to the lobby, or on her way out of the tower, and then been prevented from coming home by the utter chaos and closed public transportation.

Mancika sank onto the bed and set down her computer and keyboard carrying cases, her backpack, and her shoulder bag. She grabbed the phone with one hand and fished her address book out with the other. Before she left this building for perhaps the last time ever and set out for God knew where, she had to phone her family to let them know she was alive and physically well. She was glad she had no idea how to access Courtnie’s voicemail, since it would be too depressing to listen to doubtless message after message from the Goldfarbs, desperate to know if their only daughter were safe, and from Courtnie’s other friends.

Her fingers trembling, Mancika punched in her home phone number and waited for someone to pick up. After five rings, she finally heard her mother’s voice.

“This is Mancika.” She began speaking breathlessly, all her pent-up nerves spilling out in one fell swoop. “Today has been the worst day of my life, but I survived in one piece. Ami and I are going away somewhere together, I don’t know where yet. I’m not sure I want to return to the city even when it’s safe and cleaned up. This place is haunted by all sorts of nightmares now, and I’m afraid I’ll relive them constantly.”

“You were there?” Ophelia asked. “Not just watching from afar?”

“I’d prefer not to talk about it, but yes, I was at the World Trade Center this morning. It began when I was in the mall on the concourse, and I saw everything after I got outside.” Mancika squeezed her eyes shut. “I’ve seen, heard, smelled, and experienced things beyond human comprehension. Until my final day, I’ll never forget a single second of today.”

“What about your roommate? All I know is what I saw on the news, so I have no way of knowing if everyone got out before the buildings collapsed. I remember it took almost all day to evacuate after the ’93 bombing.”

“I know as much as you about that,” Mancika said in a deadened voice. “The last time I saw Courtnie was when we went our separate ways for the day, little dreaming what was about to happen. I stayed as close to the towers as possible until it was over, waiting for her and Raizel to come out. Then I went to the pile of ruins to try searching for them, but that wasn’t successful either.”

“Why don’t you come home to Atlantic City until all this is resolved? You’ve always got a place here, and you can recover your mind surrounded by your nearest and dearest, in a safe, calm, familiar city.”

“I’m sorry, but I’d prefer to heal with other people who went through the same thing. With all due respect, Mother, you only saw this on TV from a hundred thirty miles away, and you didn’t see anything happening on the ground. Right now, I need to be with other survivors who implicitly understand what I’m thinking and feeling, not people who might be sympathetic but who have no clue what it was like to escape from fireballs and tidal waves of smoke, to see a plane crashing into a building, to watch body after body falling through the air and exploding like a watermelon….” Mancika put the phone down, gasping for breath, and stumbled towards the bathroom to vomit.

She huddled over the toilet for what seemed like endless hours as her stomach violently contracted in time with her diaphragm and esophagus, expelling the final breakfast she’d ever eat at Windows on the World, all that foul smoke she’d inhaled, the putrid dust, the macabre mystery mix of debris, until it felt like she could vomit no more. Her stomach refused to calm down, and continued expelling its entire contents, all the way down to the bitter bile that had begun pooling there at the start of the attack. When even the supply of bile was fully exhausted, she still continued retching and bringing something up from her stomach and out through her mouth. Blood, mucus, her stomach lining, a regenerated supply of bile, whatever it was, she didn’t care. Mancika was too relieved to finally purge herself of all these toxins to much notice the bitter, disgusting aftertaste left behind to coat her tongue, the inside of her mouth, and the back of her throat.

She flinched at the feeling of hands on her shoulders, then relaxed when she realized it was Ammiel. In the next moment, a monsoon of shame swept through her for vomiting within earshot of him, and now having the evidence on full display. She hadn’t heard Ammiel entering her apartment, but it must’ve been within the last few minutes if he were in the bathroom now.

Ammiel pulled her to her feet, helped her walk to the sink, opened the medicine cabinet, and uncapped Courtnie’s cinnamon-flavored Lavoris mouthwash. “Here, gargle as strongly as you can with this, and keep it in your mouth for at least sixty seconds.”

Mancika grabbed the bottle with shaking hands, tipped her head back, and poured it into her mouth until she could barely hold anymore. While she gargled, Ammiel wheeled her suitcases into the living room.

“It’s a really good thing we have an extra-large laundry cart,” Ammiel called as she spat out the mouthwash. “There’s more than enough room for all our stuff, and you won’t have to push or carry anything. Maybe you should take Courtnie’s valuables too, so no one steals them while we’re gone.”

“Her cellphone is on her bed,” Mancika reported. “I called my mother, but I had to abandon the call when I got sick.” She flushed the toilet, grateful there was enough residual water left to wash away the evidence of her humiliation.

Ammiel dashed into Courtnie’s room and picked up the phone. “I have no clue how to operate these gadgets, but it looks like the call automatically ended. It must be programmed to do that if no one speaks for a certain length of time. Your mother also may have hung up when you stopped talking.”

“It’s just as well. I’m not ready to talk about this to anyone who wasn’t here. They’ll never understand those sights, smells, and sounds, or the primal feeling of fear. I don’t know if I’ll ever feel truly safe again.”

“We ought to ask for a sabbatical from NYU. I don’t think either of us will be able to return to classes like everything’s normal for a long time.” Ammiel leafed through the address book. “Do you mind if I call Wilhelm and ask if he’d mind coming down here to retrieve our library books? We don’t know how long we’ll be gone, and I doubt the city will indefinitely waive overdue fines.”

“Don’t be too long. The cops said we shouldn’t dawdle too much, and there’s no telling if our building will catch on fire.”

[Food packing paragraph omitted.]

“I couldn’t leave any of my books behind, and I imagine you feel the same,” he said. “Don’t worry, I can still push the cart without getting a hernia. It’s just a bit more weight than I expected.”

Mancika set the bags of food on the davenport. “I was prepared to leave most of them behind, but I’m glad we don’t have to. What about the library books? Did Wilhelm say he’d handle that for us?”

“Even better. He’s also taking his family out of the city, even though they live above Canal. That smell still carries into the Village, and there’s no telling when it’ll clear up. He asked if we’d like to join them in the perfect place to unplug from all this madness, and of course I said yes. Just wait’ll you see where we’re going.”

“Do I have any hints? Maybe I won’t like this surprise.”

“Trust me, you’ll love it. All I can tell you is that we’re not going east. The wind blows from west to east, so that rancid stench will carry all the way into Brooklyn and Queens. We’re also not going to Staten Island, since the wind can also blow south. Relocating far uptown is out of the question too, since we don’t know how far the wind will carry that toxic miasma. It might take over the entire city.” Ammiel pointed into the cart. “It’ll be easier to take our library books and renew them over the phone as many times as we can. If we can’t return to the city before we run out of renewals, someone will take them back for us.”

[Passage about packing Courtnie’s belongings omitted.]

Mancika’s last sweep-through of the apartment took down all the mezuzot on the doorposts. This final act severed her connection to this apartment that had been her home for the last year and signified her acceptance of the fact that she’d never be returning. That chapter of her life would be over forever as soon as she stepped outside of the door.

As soon as she went through the double doors of the front entrance, the acrid smell hit her nostrils. It had lost none of its potency in the time she’d been safely inside, and seemed to be even stronger, if that were at all possible.

“That sure took a long time,” a moustachioed cop said. “We have orders to evacuate this building immediately, since the fires are getting too close for comfort.” He stared at the cart. “Where did you get that?”

“We bought it last year,” Ammiel said. “It made it easier to take our clothes to the laundromat and back, and to transport all our stuff into the building without using a moving truck. Little did I dream we’d someday need to use it to evacuate the city.”

“If my roommate shows up, please tell her we were looking for her and that I packed her valuables,” Mancika begged. “I also have her cellphone. She uses her phone so much, she must’ve noticed it missing and gone home to get it before the plane hit.”

“If we see a woman of that description, we’ll pass along the information, but I don’t think anyone will voluntarily remain in this part of the city,” the auburn-haired cop said. “It’ll take a long time for all this nightmarish mess to be straightened out and normal life to resume. We can’t assume the worst until there’s a thousand percent confirmation. In the meantime, just keep praying and thinking good thoughts about her. I’m sure there’ll be lots of happy reunions over the coming days and weeks.”

***

Adam raced into Raizel’s room and fell onto his knees by the head of the bed. “Praise God you’re alive.” His voice broke as he grabbed her hand. “I couldn’t let myself believe you perished, but there was no way to know for sure what happened.”

“I’m sorry I let this happen, Dad,” she said plaintively. “I shouldn’t have gone right to the window to see where that noise was coming from. I might not’ve been thrown and pinned under a desk if I hadn’t been so close, and I could’ve gone down the stairs on my own immediately. There were about fifteen other people on that floor, and they all left without me. I don’t think they saw me, and my ears were ringing so badly I couldn’t hear if they were calling for anyone who needed help. I was too shocked to call out to them either. If anyone came down from the higher floors before I was rescued, I didn’t hear them.“

Adam squeezed her hand. “None of this was your fault. The only person to blame is that deranged madman who decided to deliberately crash a plane into the building. You were innocently minding your own business when it happened.”

“This really wasn’t an accident? The firemen who carried me down the stairs thought it might’ve been deliberate, but it’s probably too soon to know anything for sure.”

Adam shook his head. “Three planes don’t crash into important buildings all on the same day within the space of an hour by coincidence. I also heard reports of other planes on their way to attack more high-profile targets, one of which crashed into a field before it could attack.”

Raizel looked down at the hose strap tied above her ankles. “I thought there might’ve been other planes hitting the buildings. There were very loud noises and strong vibrations, and I saw fireballs on the other tower when I was on the floor.”

“The third plane hit the Pentagon. Dvora, H.G., and their girls saw it when they were stuck in traffic. From what I understand, all civilian flights in North America have been grounded, so we don’t have to worry about any further attacks until all this is figured out and the perpetrators are punished.” Adam turned to Dr. Zeldin standing on the other side of the room. “How long do you expect Raizel’s surgery to be, Doctor? I’d like to take her home to recover as soon as possible.”

“I’m sorry, but that’s not possible. She needs an external fixator on both legs, and that’ll take several hours as long as nothing goes wrong. After she wakes up, she’ll need to remain here so we can monitor her recovery, provide pain medication that can only be dispensed in a hospital, and start working on physical therapy. There’s also the issue of her head injury. It doesn’t require brain surgery, but it’s more than a little flesh wound. Her eye injuries and smoke inhalation also need close monitoring. I understand you’re concerned for your child and want only the best for her, but you can’t do that by removing her from the hospital and taking her on even a short journey when her health is so fragile. Raizel will be in very good hands the entire time she’s here, and as I told you, no-fault insurance will probably cover everything. If being seriously injured in a probable terrorist attack doesn’t quality for no-fault coverage, I don’t know what will.”

“But she can’t be here all by herself for weeks,” Adam protested. “Particularly not during the High Holy Days. Who spends the holidays in a hospital?”

“We have chaplains, and if there are enough Jewish patients and Raizel is well enough to move about the hospital, she can attend services in our chapel. Perhaps one of the rabbis on her campus can also pay a visit.”

“One of my little sisters and one of my brothers-in-law are rabbis uptown. Their names are Lara Brandt-van Acker and Lev Shvarts.”

“I’m hungry,” Raizel said. “I haven’t eaten anything since about eight-fifteen.”

“You can have a liquid meal after you come out of surgery and the anesthesia wears off, provided you have an appetite and are recovering normally,” Dr. Zeldin said. “Though the last thing on most patients’ minds after surgery is eating. You’ll be very groggy, and your reflexes will take awhile to fully return. Would you prefer juice, tea, broth, or a milkshake?”

“Can I have a chocolate peanut butter banana milkshake and grape juice?”

“You sure can. How strictly do you keep kosher?”

“My family only eats kosher meat and uses two sets of dishes, but sometimes we’ll eat cold food from a salad bar at a non-kosher restaurant. Normal kosher dairy products are good enough for us. We’re not so religious we require chalav Yisrael.”

“I’ll put that in your diet order. If we’re unable to obtain anything while the city is closed off, would vegetarian meals suffice?”

“Raizel will eat anything in an emergency,” Adam said. “Her maternal grandparents and my mother wouldn’t have survived the Shoah if they’d insisted on keeping strict kosher when there was barely any food of any kind. My wife’s father isn’t a lone survivor either. All eleven of his siblings and one of their aunts survived, and my wife’s mother survived with all six of her siblings and her mother, who’s still living at almost one hundred.” He turned to her. “Remember that, Raizeleh. You come from strong survivor stock and a very blessed family. As soon as you’re able to come home, we’ll have a big party to celebrate.”

“Doctor, is there enough time for me to say Tehillim with my father before surgery?” Raizel asked. “I have the book in my purse. It’s a miracle my purse landed close to me when I was thrown and that I saw it after the firemen pulled the desk off of me. I know my life is most important, but I would’ve hated to lose all the important things in my purse.”

“Your surgery isn’t scheduled immediately,” Dr. Zeldin said. “While you’re in the OR, your things will be safe and sound in a locker, and they’ll be taken to your recovery room.”

“I don’t understand how almost no one was in the restaurant at that time of the morning,” Adam said. “I know it doesn’t open to the public until nine, but plenty of people who work in the towers go there earlier.”

“I wasn’t at Windows on the World,” Raizel admitted. “I was on the ninety-first floor looking at art, since my shift hadn’t started yet. I don’t know if it’s a good or bad thing I had moved down from the ninety-second floor by the time the plane hit, since I didn’t hear any footsteps coming down the stairs. Maybe they all evacuated while my ears were ringing, or maybe they were trapped by the fire and big pieces of debris.”

Adam pallored. “It’s not possible thousands of people on so many floors all went down the stairs so quickly without you hearing them. I was watching from my office, and I didn’t see the smoke and fire consuming all the floors above the impact. I hope to God I’m horribly mistaken and that everyone escaped, but you may have been on the highest floor of survival, and your love of art saved your life.”

Raizel was in a daze as she and her father read Psalms together. She could make no sense of anything that had happened today, but the idea that a seemingly random quirk of fate had meant the difference between life and death, escape and entrapment, was too unfathomable to comprehend or contemplate. It was almost a relief when she was wheeled into the operating room and an anesthesia mask was placed over her mouth and nose. Before she could count all the way down from ten, she’d be deep in sleep and far, far removed from all these ugly realities of this strange, monstrous new world that had been unleashed.

Charlotte’s Most Terrifying Prophecy (10:40–11:15 AM)

Because the 25th anniversary of 9/11 is coming up, I’m sharing “Charlotte’s Most Terrifying Prophecy,” from my magnum opus Cinnimin, in installments. These posts are much longer than usual, but they’re all split into sections as the story is told montage-style. It goes without saying that there’s an extreme content warning for graphic depictions of the events of that day!

Mancika kept her hand pressed tightly over her mouth and nose as she walked on trembling legs towards the remains of the World Trade Center complex, trying her best to ignore the sharp, stiff pain in her knees. That noxious smell was still saturating the air, and dust and debris continued to float around even after the monstrous mushroom cloud had broken up and drifted off to another part of the Financial District. But even with her mouth and nostrils covered, she could still smell the commingling of burnt plastic, burnt tires, the ashes of paper, mystery chemicals, something stronger than gasoline she guessed must be jet fuel, molten metals, asbestos, burning office furniture, and the faintest base scent of whatever the dust was composed of. She had brushed off her hair, clothes, and bags repeatedly, but the foreign matter just kept cascading through the air and falling onto her all over again.

It was impossible to make heads or tails of the tragic pile of burning rubble and twisted metal ruins, which seemed to have neither beginning nor end. The remains of the city’s tallest buildings extended as far as the eye could see, representing untold thousands upon thousands upon thousands upon thousands of pounds of debris. If Mancika hadn’t witnessed what happened, she’d think an atomic bomb had detonated and destroyed everything in its immediate wake. The only thing missing was the black rain that had fallen after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

As the sprawling mass of wreckage came closer into view, Mancika noticed some of the people walking around on top of it wore normal street clothes, not just police and firefighting uniforms. That must mean ordinary volunteers were allowed to conduct searches too.  Her heart thumped as she slowly took her first step onto it.

The moment her foot made contact with the rubble, an intense wave of heat and smoke assailed the sole of her shoe. When she put her other foot down, the same thing happened. The rubble also quivered under her feet, as if she were walking on molten lava or boiling quicksand threatening to suck her under if she couldn’t find secure footing.

“Courtnie, Raizel, are you here?” She had to shout over the strange, high-pitched chirping scattered all over the site and emanating from unseen places below. “It’s me, Mancika. I’ve been watching for you all day, and I’m not going home until I know you’re safe.”

When there was no response, she climbed towards the top of a heap of pulverized metal, wood, and paper intermingled with shattered glass and ripped-off pieces of the tower walls. The smell became ever more oppressive with every step she ventured, and she had to dodge a few fireballs raining down from the crushed remains of the other buildings in the plaza.

As she neared the top of this macabre miniature mountain, she lost her footing and pitched forward on both knees. She screamed as she began sinking down into the toxic, tragic morass faster than she could react, inches away from a patch of flames in front of her and ominously rising smoke on both her right and left. When she put her hands out to try to break her fall, they landed right on a very hot piece of steel.

In the next instant, someone grabbed her under the shoulders from behind. As she was slowly pulled backwards, the flames in front of her leapt higher and rose to the exact place her face had been seconds ago.

“It’s me, Ammiel. I’ve been so worried about you all day, and thought I might’ve lost you.” His voice was choked with emotion, and he sounded as if he were about to cry.

Mancika shrieked as she started falling forward again, her face millimeters away from the hot, dancing flames now starting to fan out to the right and left.

“Help me!” Ammiel shouted. “I can’t hold her and pull her out all by myself!”

Mancika leaned back as far as possible while Ammiel pulled her and someone behind Ammiel in turn pulled him. Her heart raced, her limbs shook, and her head pounded during the ensuing seconds that felt like hours it took to pull her back onto her feet, while that grotesque smell continued choking the air and lodging deep in her nostrils and lungs.

She very slowly turned around, careful not to bear any weight through portions of the rubble that felt unstable underfoot, and saw her second rescuer was the cop she’d spoken with twice. Ammiel grabbed her left arm and the cop grabbed her right arm as she started sinking into the macabre morass all over again.

“Why did you let this woman onto the site?” the cop shouted at a group of firefighters standing nearby. “She could’ve gotten seriously hurt or become another casualty!”

“We assumed she was a Red Cross volunteer or something,” the tallest one stuttered. “This search and rescue mission needs as many hands on deck as possible.”

“I just wanted to look for two of my friends,” Mancika said as Ammiel and the cop painstakingly walked her off of the smoky, stinking mound. “I wasn’t trying to cause trouble.”

“Every time I’ve seen you today, I’ve told you it’s not safe to be here. I understand your instincts to worry about missing friends, but you won’t find out what happened to them any faster by trying to do the work of trained rescue workers.” He cast his gaze back at the sprawling heap of smoking, flaming ruins and rubble as they finally stepped off of it. “It’ll take months to clear all of this away, and working on this site will be a big occupational hazard.”

Mancika slumped against Ammiel and locked her arms around him, at long last releasing the flood of primal, traumatized sobs she’d been repressing all morning. She began sobbing from even deeper in her soul when Ammiel wrapped his arms around her. “Take me away from here, Ami,” she managed to choke out. “I have to get away from this toxic smell and all these depressing memories. Every time I see the hole in the skyline and this huge mass grave, I’ll be reminded of the worst day of my life.”

“I think this was the worst day of everyone’s life. I was so terrified you were stuck in that building and still inside when it collapsed.” He brushed the dust off of her hair and face. “Giuliani was just on the radio ordering everyone below Canal Street to evacuate. We’ll discuss where exactly we’re evacuating to and how to get there after I take you home.”

“The sooner you can leave, the better,” the cop agreed. “There’s no telling if the entire downtown will become a toxic wasteland or the site of a great fire. The only reason I’m still here is because my job requires it. Miss, I commend you for such loyalty to your missing friends and going above and beyond to try to find them, but you must leave things in the hands of law enforcement and the other official agencies. Just try to relax and let your boyfriend take care of you, and by the time you return to the city, this mess will be all gone and the air will be clear again.”

Though Mancika and Ammiel were always so quick to correct people who mistook them for girlfriend and boyfriend or insisted they couldn’t really just be best friends when they had such intimate familiarities, this time neither corrected the false assumption. Mancika also couldn’t help feeling something about Ammiel’s behavior towards her had changed, and that she in turn had also experienced such a shift over these last few minutes. It were as if they suddenly needed one another as more than just very close best friends who happened to be of the opposite sex.

“Before we go, may I ask your name, Officer?” Mancika asked. “I want to know just who helped me so many times today.”

“Harry Baron. I’m named after my great-grandfather, who was also a cop.”

Mancika shook his hand. “Thank you very much for everything you’ve done for me. I won’t forget you. My name is Mancika Laurel, and that’s Ammiel Garfinkel.”

“Yes, thank you so much for helping me save Mancika,” Ammiel said. “I don’t want to think about what might’ve happened if you hadn’t been there.”

Mancika needed no urging to start walking away from the toxic inferno that had replaced the World Trade Center complex. She leaned heavily against Ammiel as they started towards Greenwich St. in the unnatural midday darkness. The city might be torn apart like a modern Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but at least now she had someone to help her through it.

***

Raizel looked around at the rather empty hospital she was being wheeled into. She had expected it would be packed from stem to stern with injured people, but there was barely anyone else in her line of vision.

“Where are all the other patients? Were they moved to another floor, or are they all in the ER?”

A young brunet, brown-eyed doctor in blue scrubs shook his head, a pained look in his eyes. “We vastly overestimated how many patients would be coming in. It’s too early to say if that’s a good thing because almost everyone successfully evacuated without injury, or if it’s because God knows how many people were killed. I hope all the survivors are pulled out of the ruins as soon as possible.” He turned to the paramedics who had brought Raizel in. “What are this young lady’s injuries?”

“She temporally lost consciousness after a piece of falling debris hit her on the back of the head, and we flushed debris out of her eyes,” the woman in the green pantsuit said. “The head injury caused her to bleed rather heavily. She’s also complaining of a splitting headache, nausea, and severe pain in her legs and ribs.”

“Please let me have morphine,” Raizel begged plaintively as the doctor wrote all this on a clipboard. “The firemen who saved me said I could get some as soon as I got to the paramedics.”

The doctor picked up a hypodermic needle from a tray full of instruments and injected it into her right arm. Raizel was so out of her mind with agony, she barely felt this tiny prick of her skin and muscle.

“I’m sorry I can’t give you constant morphine in an IV, but you need to have a CAT scan and X-rays first. Was there any smoke or fire on your floor?”

Raizel instinctively put her hand over her nose at the memory. “The plane hit a few stories above me, and the smell was so strong. I thought I was about to fall unconscious from smoke inhalation just before I was rescued, and there were fires nearby.”

“And what caused the pain in your legs and ribs? That high up, I imagine you were thrown.”

“It was my fault for standing right at the window to see what was causing the noise. I saw the plane coming right at me almost directly head-on, and the whole building shook like an earthquake when it hit. I don’t know how far I was flung. The next thing I knew, I was pinned under a desk and couldn’t move. Until the firemen lifted it off of me almost an hour later, I was afraid I was paralyzed because I couldn’t feel my legs.”

“It sounds like your legs might be broken. Not to worry, we’ll put casts on them if they are, and if they’re more severely broken, we’ll do surgery as soon as possible.”

A blessèd wave of drowsiness pulsed through Raizel as the morphine started working its magic and zapped away the pain that had held her hostage for the last few hours. She wished there were another marvellous medicine that could just as quickly and easily take away the nightmarish memories of this morning.

“Since you were moved such a great distance without your bones being stabilized, your healing time may be a bit longer and more complicated, but at least stabilization wasn’t delayed by more than a few hours. Let’s hope the affected bones didn’t move too far out of alignment.”

“My legs are tied together in three places,” Raizel remembered. “You’ll have to give the hose straps back to the fire department, but I have no idea what company it is. All I know are the first names of my rescuers, Leon and Jeremy. Can you please try to find them so I can send them a thank-you letter and gift?”

“I can definitely forward that information along to someone.” The doctor turned back to his clipboard. “In the meantime, I need to know your own name and birthdate. I’m Dr. Zeldin.”

“I’m Raizel Hinda Brandt-van Acker, and I was born March 19, 1983.”

Dr. Zeldin smiled. “My great-grandmother’s name was Raizel. Are you in the city as a student, or does your family live around here?”

“I just started NYU. My parents live in West Orange, and my father works on Madison Avenue. Can you please phone someone from my family to let them know I’m alive? My address book is in my purse.”

Dr. Zeldin took it from her shoulder and unzipped it. “What’s your father’s name?”

“Adam Brandt-van Acker. If you can’t reach him, you can call my mother Golda, and if she’s unavailable too, you can try my uncle Wilhelm Brandt-van Acker. He lives the closest, in Greenwich Village.”

“I’ll have someone call all of them. It might be a bit tricky to come here when everything below Canal Street is closing, but the police might be more inclined to let them through to visit an immediate relative in the hospital.”

“Can I go back to my dorm tonight? I don’t want to fall behind in my classes.”

Dr. Zeldin shook his head. “All the city’s schools are indefinitely closed, and many students may not feel ready to return right away regardless. Everyone just lived through probably the worst trauma of all of our lives, and it’s impossible to immediately try to resume normal life as though nothing out of the ordinary just happened.”

***

Adam pressed his hand over his mouth and nose the instant he stepped outside. A foul smell beyond recognition smothered the air, and thick, dark grey clouds seeming to stretch on out to infinity blocked out the sunlight, the blue of the sky, and the clouds. The first whiff of that strange scent had been enough to almost take Adam’s breath away and cause him to pass out. He immediately ducked back into the office to get something to wrap around his nose and mouth until he could find a pharmacy selling medical masks.

“There’s a phone call for you, Mr. Brandt van-Acker,” the receptionist said. “I was about to run down the street to find you.”

“Is it my daughter Raizel?” His voice trembled.

“No, it’s someone named Dr. Nathan Zeldin. He said it’s very urgent.”

Adam grabbed the phone. “Is my father’s condition stable? Please tell me he survived.”

“I’m not calling about your father. My patient is your daughter Raizel.”

Adam dropped into the nearest chair, his heart thudding. “Praise God. I was terrified she didn’t get out of the building in time. My father had a heart attack when he saw it on the TV, assuming she was dead.”

“Based on the information I was told, she was carried out at almost the last second and was temporarily unconscious after a heavy piece of debris conked her on the head. She’s going to need surgery on both of her legs, since the tibia and fibula were badly shattered from being pinned under a desk for almost an hour. She also has a few broken ribs and will need stitches in her head. I thought she might have a traumatic brain injury because of how badly her head was cut and bleeding, but the CAT scan was normal. She’ll also need to be closely monitored for eye injuries, since the paramedics rinsed dust and debris out of her eyes.”

“I wouldn’t care if she were a quad amputee, quadriplegic, blind and deaf, brain-damaged, or burnt over her entire body. The life of my firstborn child is the only important thing. I’ll pay whatever you ask, and give you extra as a reward for your services.”

“The bill hasn’t been tabulated yet, but I imagine insurance will cover most of it. If you can’t afford to pay it all at once, we have several payment plans. Do you know how to get to NYU Downtown Hospital? You’ll have to come on foot, since all the subways and buses were shut down. Everything below Canal Street is also supposed to be closed, but the police will probably let you through if you say you’re coming to visit your daughter in the hospital.”

“No, I’m afraid I don’t know your address. I assumed Raizel would be taken care of in the NYU student clinic, so I didn’t bother to learn the locations of any nearby hospitals.”

Adam took a notepad and pen out of his briefcase and speedily jotted down the directions. The walk would probably take around two hours with all the roadblocks and potential reroutes figured in, but Raizel might be out of surgery by the time he arrived. Hopefully this would be outpatient surgery and the hospital would lend a wheelchair, and he could start the trek towards a ferry to New Jersey with her after the anesthesia wore off. The sooner they could both begin putting this nightmarish day behind them, the better.