Charlotte’s Most Terrifying Prophecy (5:30–6:30 PM)

Since this month is 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!

H.G. came into the kitchen while Dvora and the girls were eating leftover ramen noodles in plain vegetable broth, canned sweetcorn, and thawed frozen mixed berries, and drinking grape Hawaiian Punch. He pulled a chipped, secondhand bowl, plate, and glass out of the meat cabinet, took a spoon and fork out of the meat drawer, and joined them at the table.

“I have some good news and bad news,” he began. “Which would you like to hear first?”

Dvora gave him a dismissive look. “After what we witnessed this morning, could there really be anything that’s worse news than that?”

“It pales in relative comparison, but it’s still not good news. Actually, there are two pieces of bad news, but not really so bad, because the worst possible outcome was avoided.”

“Can you just spit it out already and tell me what these things are?” Dvora spooned more corn into her bland soup. “And are they suitable to say in front of the girls?”

“I’m obviously not going to give all the details.” H.G. ladled soup into his bowl. “Raizel was badly hurt, but she’s safe in a hospital now. She’s probably out of surgery by now.”

“What happened to her?” Yael asked.

“She was in another building that was hit by a plane in New York, and since she was so high up, she flew through the air and ended up under a desk. Two very nice firemen found her and lifted off the desk. They carried her down ninety-one flights of stairs. Both of her legs are severely broken, and she also got stitches in her head and has a few other fairly minor problems. If she heals well, she might be out of the hospital by Halloween.”

“Can we make her get-well cards and presents?” Tehilla asked.

“Of course, everyone in our family will. She’ll really appreciate that.” H.G. poured punch into his glass. “Dvora, your father is also in the hospital after having a heart attack.”

Dvora dropped her spoon, causing broth to splash onto the table. “Since when does he have heart problems! He’s always seemed so healthy apart from being too emotional!”

“That’s exactly what caused it. When he saw Raizel’s building collapsing on TV, he immediately assumed she was still inside, and had a heart attack of shock. Adam was on the phone with him when it happened, and hasn’t been able to get back in touch with him or anyone else in Atlantic City since. He could only pass along the general news.”

“Raizel’s building collapsed?” Yael asked. “It must not have been built very well.”

“Do buildings fall down very often?” Tehilla asked. “I don’t want that to happen to our apartment or school.”

“I’ll leave it to engineers and physicists to figure out why that happened,” H.G. said. “You shouldn’t worry about that happening to any buildings here. Those were extremely unusual, unexpected circumstances.” He put some berries on his plate. “The good news is that Wilhelm decided to take his family out of New York, and they’re going to the perfect place to unplug from all this craziness. My cousin Mancika and her friend Ammiel are going too. When I mentioned how badly you also want to get away, Wilhelm asked if we’d like to come too.”

“I wish we could, but Yael can’t miss school, and I can’t work without daycare for the other girls,” Dvora said. “We can’t miss work either.”

“You were just saying how much you hate this apartment and feel it’s high time to move to a larger, better place. Why not use this chance to start over? I’d probably have to return to Washington after the High Holy Days, but you and the girls can stay there as long as you want. Wilhelm reassured me there’ll be other children besides his own, and they’ll have a homeschool co-op. They’ll have religious services too. I’m afraid I can’t give any more details, since he wants it to be a surprise.”

“Can we please go, Daddy?” Tehilla begged. “We’ve never had a real vacation.”

“How long is the drive?” Dvora asked.

“Around four hours for us,” H.G. said. “It’ll take Wilhelm’s family about two hours.”

“Can we get ice-cream during the drive?” Yael asked.

“Sure, why not. We’ll need to stop for a bathroom break and to stretch our legs anyway. As soon as you finish dinner, you can start packing, and then we’ll be on our way to a peaceful, beautiful, magical place where we can forget all our troubles.”

***

Mancika continued watching the waterfront as Wilhelm and Ravid loaded up the moving truck, refusing to give up hope that Courtnie was somewhere on the other side or on one of the umpteen boats constantly coming and going. Surely by now she’d been released from the hospital, gone home, packed her most important possessions, and gone to the pier to wait for transportation off the island. Or perhaps she’d decided to evacuate northward or eastward and remain in the city, just a safe distance away from the raw reminder of what had been wrought and the devastating environmental impact. Courtnie could be walking over the Brooklyn Bridge with thousands of other people right this very minute, on her way to her parents in Queens. If she were still in the hospital, she’d contact Mancika as soon as she was able, or she’d get a doctor or nurse to do it. The only other possibility was that she’d been buried in the rubble and would be found sooner rather than later. Mancika couldn’t let herself think of the one remaining scenario, or of anyone in those buildings now being in the other world.

“Where did this cat come from!” Wilhelm shouted. “Don’t tell me it jumped into the laundry cart without anyone seeing!”

Mancika staggered to her feet and slowly ambulated towards the two rented vehicles in a nearby open-air parking lot. When she looked down into the cart, she saw an uncollared buff-colored cat with light green eyes wedged between the boxes of books Ammiel had thrown in at the last minute.

“Our landlord only allowed fish, and we never saw any cats in the building,” she stammered. “It’s possible this animal got inside through an open window or door.”

“We can’t leave a live animal in the back of this truck,” Wilhelm said. “It risks suffocating in the bus too. Let’s hope the restaurant permits us to take a cat inside on account of today’s extreme extenuating circumstances.”

Mancika beckoned and clucked to the cat, who approached her with an upright tail at least half the length of a typical cat’s tail. The friendly demeanor and lack of fear of humans indicated this cat wasn’t feral, but probably a stray that had had humans at one point. As soon as she scooped the cat up, she could tell from the body that this cat was heavily pregnant.

“Are you taking us to a pet-friendly place?” Mancika asked. “We can’t let her out on the streets to fend for herself.”

“Animals of all sorts are welcome there,” Wilhelm said as he lowered and locked the back of the truck. “You’ll see just what types when we arrive.”

Mancika tucked Bugs under her left arm and followed Wilhelm. She cared less what people might think of her for carrying a stuffed animal in public at her age. This was a connection to Courtnie, wherever she now was, and a lucky token. After what she’d gone through today, she needed all the lucky talismans she could get. Even if Bugs didn’t bring her any luck and she were just being superstitious, he was still something comforting to cling to in the midst of so much upheaval and uncertainty.

***

Out of the corner of his eye, Adam caught sight of Joke, Lev, and their children at the Hoboken pier. On their left were Lara’s family and Noa’s family, and on their right were Ida and Nikos. They were all loaded down with luggage and bulging totebags.

“You evacuated too?” Adam asked as he hugged Joke. “But you live uptown, and Lev and Lara need to stay with their congregations for the High Holidays.”

“We spent hours discussing the pros and cons of remaining in the city or temporarily leaving,” Ida said. “Ultimately, we decided it was safest for both our mental and physical health to go away. That awful smell isn’t quite so intense uptown, but the wind still carried it there. There’s no way of knowing when it’ll clear up, and what kind of damage it’ll do to the water, air, ground, and everything else it comes into contact with.”

“I’m not a pulpit rabbi,” Lev said. “Part of me feels like a coward for running away at this time, but I don’t want to risk sticking around in a city that might be attacked again if this is the start of World War Three. My children deserve to feel safe, and none of us want the experience of such somber, depressing holidays. As my parents and grandparents found out, staying in the Soviet Union out of misplaced loyalty and thinking nothing could really get much worse was an awful mistake that easily could’ve ended up with devastating consequences. I can’t voluntarily put my own kids through something similar to what I endured growing up.”

“Wilhelm said they’ll have religious services at his family’s retreat, which means Lev and I will be very useful to their community,” Lara said. “Most of the people there will be other evacuees, so they’ll need spiritual counselling.”

“And I can provide dance therapy,” Ida said. “It feels wrong to perform any ballet when my calling for dancing demands to be used in a more meaningful way now. I’d only return to the city for a charitable ballet raising money for relief efforts.”

“I wasn’t nearly as scared of New York ten or twenty years ago as I am now,” Joke said. “The crime rate may have been a lot higher, but at least we knew which areas to avoid, and when. Now it feels like no corner is truly safe.”

“I called ahead to hire a moving van and a huge Ford Club Wagon Chateau,” Lev said. “Would you care to join us?”

Adam shook his head. “I have to catch a bus to West Orange. Unlike apparently everyone else in our family, I haven’t the option to take a spur of the moment sabbatical from work, and I don’t have spare cash to rent huge vehicles and stay at a resort indefinitely. There hasn’t been a war on American soil for almost a hundred fifty years. I’m worried about what might happen next too, but not so much I’m going to uproot my entire life and hide away.”

“That was what too many people in Europe during the last war thought,” Ida said. “Our grandparents Brandt were among the relative few to see the writing on the wall and escape while it was still possible. We might not exist if they’d ignored warning signs and stayed in Germany or The Netherlands.”

“I told Raizel’s doctor Lara and Lev are rabbis and would come to celebrate the holidays with her and pray with her. Doesn’t she deserve some familiar faces while she’s in the hospital? Unless a war really does break out, I doubt the city will remain closed and potentially dangerous for more than a week or two.”

“Until we know what exactly is happening and how safe it is with all that toxic air, we’re staying far away,” Lara reiterated. “Are you sure you don’t want to join us even for a few days? I’m sure Golda and your girls won’t object to a vacation.”

“You know the mood in West Orange will be just as heavy as it is in New York for some time,” Noa said. “It’s in the greater metropolitan area, and lots of residents worked at the World Trade Center or know people who did. At least ask Golda and the girls if they’d be interested. This is no frivolous vanity vacation, though we acknowledge how lucky and privileged we are to be able to take sabbaticals without risking poverty.”

“I’ll mention it if you insist, though I’m sure they’ll agree with me that our place is at home. This is nothing like what our parents went through.”

“You can’t say that for sure,” Myron said. “My parents resisted the postwar exodus to suburbia as long as they could, but when the Newark Riots broke out, they hightailed it to West Orange. It reminded them too much of Poland and Serbia during the war. What if they’d stayed in the city and denied the undeniable urban decay and rising crime rate? They wanted to live in a safe, peaceful place, which Newark no longer represented to them or my older sisters. Perhaps if you lived in New York itself instead of a suburb, you’d feel much differently.”

“Your office must be shut down for the near future anyway,” Nohar pointed out. “Think of this as a High Holy Days retreat, not running away from real life and assuming the worst must be on the horizon.”

Adam transferred his briefcase to his other hand. “If you put it that way, maybe it’s not such a bad idea. But don’t expect me to stay there indefinitely. Normal life must resume at some point, and it won’t get any easier if it’s postponed longer than necessary. We can’t let our enemies, whoever they might be, win by making ourselves look like easily-scared cowards.”

***

The restaurant Wilhelm indicated on a quiet side street looked more like a mosque, with mesmerizing tilework in beautiful shades of blue, yellow, and green. It was bookended by replica minarets, with a large dome in the middle, and the double doors were beneath the trademark keyhole arch.

“Are you sure this is the right address?” Roger asked.

“I’ve been in Jersey City enough times to be familiar with where everything is,” Wilhelm said. “You know we’ll eat a really good meal here, since they took such care with architecture and presentation.”

Everyone in the restaurant stopped what they were doing and stared at the nine dust-covered people coming inside. Of all of them, Mancika was by far the dustiest. At least she’d finally stopped coughing since crossing the Hudson.

“Do you mind if we don’t have reservations?” Wilhelm asked. “We just came from New York, and the woman with bobbed hair hasn’t eaten anything since breakfast. She was at the World Trade Center all morning, even after she got out of the building.”

“I’m sorry about the cat,” Mancika said. “We didn’t know she stowed away with us. I hope she doesn’t decide to give birth here.”

“You’re all welcome at the Garden of Herat,” a tall man with a neatly-trimmed moustache said. “We’ll give you a free meal to make up for what you’ve experienced. Your stowaway will be safe here. We’ll feed her too.”

Mancika put the cat down and staggered off to the ladies’ room with Trixie, Kalanit, Sharona, and Avira. They brushed off their clothes, leaving piles of dust all over the tile floor, before turning to the sinks to wash their faces, necks, hands, arms, and hair. No amount of soap and water made Mancika feel truly clean, even after all the dust seemed to be physically gone, but this was better than nothing.

“Do you have hijabs and jilbabs for us to borrow?” Trixie asked when they reemerged. “We can go back to our moving van to retrieve scarves for that purpose if you don’t have any.”

The tall man laughed. “My family came to America to escape Islamic rule in Afghanistan. Until 1992, Afghan women had the same rights and freedoms as Western women, including a modern style of dressing. We wouldn’t have opened a restaurant serving the general public if we were religious fanatics who couldn’t abide different ways of living. All the women in my family, some of whom work here, have always been unveiled.”

“We haven’t had many customers today,” a man with a larger moustache said. “This could just be a coincidence, but our feeling is that people are avoiding us because they blame today’s events on Middle Easterners and assume all of us share that abhorrent ideology just because we’re from the same corner of the world. They don’t know or care anything about the history or culture of our different countries, just that the only Middle Easterners and Muslims they’ve ever heard of are terrorists and religious fanatics.”

“People who think like that are ignorant fools,” Ammiel said. “I often wonder how I’m the same species as people who unquestioningly let sensational, decontextualized news reporting about rare events do all their thinking for them. They’re the kind of people who ran away from cities to suburbia because they just couldn’t bear to live alongside anyone the least bit different from them.”

The tall man introduced himself as Rahim Bettani, the manager, and led them to a large table overlooking the courtyard garden. When they were all seated, he distributed menus. Vegetarian dishes were marked with a capital V, and every dish was named in both Pashto and English. Wilhelm ordered common appetizers of tabakhai flatbread and maash palaw, a sweet and sour pilaf with apricots, mung beans, and bulgur wheat, and an Afghan salad with cucumbers, tomatoes, mint, carrots, cilantro, and lime juice. Mancika decided on bolani, fried flatbreads stuffed with potatoes and served with mint yoghurt; dolma stuffed with rice; and a vegetarian qormah stew with potatoes, carrots, peas, eggplant, bell peppers, tomatoes, cauliflower, cilantro, and turmeric; and saffron green tea.

When the food arrived, served by Rahim’s oldest daughter Zarghuna, Mancika set upon it like a famished wolf. Though this could never compare to this morning’s final experience of eating at Windows on the World with its exciting panorama on all sides, the food was so much better, and tasted even more comforting because it came after hours of an empty stomach. An ordinary, overpriced lox omelette, pineapple chunks, and hot chocolate were nothing next to the historical cuisine of Afghanistan prepared and cooked with so much love and care. The right kind of food truly was penicillin for whatever ailed one.

Charlotte’s Most Terrifying Prophecy (2:30–5:30 PM)

Since this month is 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!

After what felt like hours upon hours of waiting and moving up in the packed line every so incrementally, Wilhelm’s family finally appeared on the horizon, directed to Mancika and Ammiel by several phonecalls reporting nearby landmarks and street signs that were still recognizable. Mancika’s medical mask barely did anything to block out the oppressive stench penetrating every molecule of the atmosphere, and seemed to make it even worse. Without the ability to breathe freely, even if it were to breathe in such a disgusting stench, Mancika was consumed by nausea akin to motion sickness. She spent most of her time sitting down in that thick dust and pulverized debris, uncaring if there were human remains mixed in. All she cared about at this point was getting the hell out of this cursed, besieged city.

“I keep thinking I’ll wake up any minute and find all this was just the worst nightmare of my life,” Wilhelm said. “It’s beyond human comprehension. The people who planned this are so mentally disturbed, even my father couldn’t cure them.”

“I thought pilots were good people,” Avira said. “Why would they do something like this?”

“I don’t think those were the original pilots,” Kalanit tried to tell her. “All those planes were probably crashed by the aerial version of pirates.”

“I keep thinking there are still rogue aircraft flying around somewhere, just waiting to strike more targets,” Trixie said. “We haven’t seen or heard any planes since they were all ordered to make emergency landings, but you never know if some bandits are still out there, undetected by radar.”

“Is that why I haven’t seen any planes since this morning?” Mancika asked. “I haven’t been able to watch or listen to any news, so all I know is what I’ve experienced myself.”

“New York isn’t the only city that was attacked,” Sharona said. “A third plane crashed into the Pentagon, and a fourth plane crashed in a field near Pittsburgh. Aunt Dvora, Uncle H.G., and their girls saw the crash in Washington when they were on the road. Roger, Avira, and I were dismissed from school early, and our parents all had to come home from work.”

Mancika put her hands over her face and leaned against the laundry cart, hyperventilating. Ammiel dropped to his knees beside her and rubbed her back.

“We’ll be out of this place before you know it, and you’ll have nothing but clean air to breathe,” he soothed her. “When we get to Jersey, we’ll have a hearty lunch.”

“What about Courtnie and Raizel! They’re still missing!”

“Raizel is alive,” Wilhelm reassured her. “Adam phoned me from NYU Downtown Hospital to say she’s being taken to surgery. Two firemen carried her down from the ninety-first floor and got her out of the building as it was starting to collapse.”

Mancika uncovered her face and looked up at him. “Did he say anything about my roommate? She’s been missing this entire time. I have a theory she noticed her cellphone missing and left to retrieve it before the plane hit. She can’t live without that thing.”

“Has anyone called or left voicemail?” Ravid asked.

“I don’t know how to access voicemail. All I know how to do on a cellphone is make calls and hang up.”

Ammiel extended Courtnie’s phone. “Do any of you know how to access her messages? I’m surprised her parents and brothers haven’t been ringing this thing off the hook since we found it. Maybe after a certain point they gave up hope or assumed no news was good news.”

Ravid took the phone and hit the menu key on the left side below the screen. He then hit a few more buttons until he pulled up the text messages, which he scrolled through with an increasingly grey face.

“There are lots of texts asking where she is and if she’s safe. Many are from the same people over and over again. I’ll need her voicemail number to access those messages.”

“I wouldn’t know that,” Mancika said in a deadened voice. “I know lots about Macs both past and present, but nothing about any kind of cellphones. Courtnie never told me her voicemail number either, since she had no reason to think I’d ever need it.”

“Do you know her parents’ number?”

“It’s in my address book for emergencies, though I’ve never called them before.”

Ammiel pulled her shoulder bag out of the cart and rifled through it until he found the red book. He flipped to the page with Mr. and Mrs. Goldfarb’s details, then took the phone back, pressed the buttons, and held it up to Mancika’s ear.

“Hello.” She began speaking breathlessly as soon as she heard Mrs. Goldfarb’s voice. “This is Mancika Laurel. Have you had any word from Courtnie today?”

“No, but we’ve called her multiple times without any response. What are you doing with her cellphone? Are you in the hospital with her?”

“Courtnie left her phone at home, and I found it when I was packing to evacuate. Ammiel and I are waiting for a boat to Jersey now with some family friends. The last time I saw Courtnie was a bit past eight-thirty. We had breakfast at Windows on the World, and then she hurried to work to impress her boss with how she always arrives before her shift. I was in the mall when the first plane hit, and after I got outside, I stayed as close as possible to watch for Courtnie. I never saw her, and there was no sign she’d been home when I got back to our apartment.”

“You’ve really heard nothing at all?” Mrs. Goldfarb asked in a pleading tone. “Have you tried contacting hospitals or her friends and co-workers? There must be some way to find information.”

“She couldn’t have gone long without noticing her phone missing. She was probably on her way down to the lobby when the plane hit. I didn’t think to call hospitals, but I’ll do that as soon as I find their numbers. We had to evacuate because of nearby fires, but I packed Courtnie’s valuables for safekeeping.”

“Courtnie would’ve given our number to the hospital,” Mrs. Goldfarb fretted. “She’d never let us worry so long without any word. Perhaps she’s unconscious, in deep shock, or physically unable to speak.”

“I went to the rubble to look for her after the second collapse, but I started falling in, and a cop ordered me away. He and Ami had to pull me out and walk me off of that pile of destruction.” She began struggling for breath at the memory, and Ammiel put the phone to his own ear with his right hand and rubbed her back with his left hand.

“I really wish we could tell you any good news, but we honestly don’t know anything. As soon as we hear from Courtnie, we’ll immediately contact you. Goodbye.”

Mancika slumped against him as he pushed the button to hang up. “How much longer do we have to wait? I won’t feel safe till we’re as far away from this inferno as possible.”

“We’re not going to the other end of the earth, but I know you’ll really like our destination as soon as you see it. You might never want to return to New York afterwards.”

“I never want to return regardless!”

“It won’t always be like this,” Wilhelm said. “New York always heals and rebuilds after tragedy and crisis. Not so long ago, the city was in a different kind of ruins, and almost no one who could help it wanted to live here. After so many years of sinking lower and lower and driving away more and more people, New York finally recovered and became stronger than ever. That’ll happen again now, even if we won’t be here for the initial stages of healing.”

“How long do you think we’ll be away?” Roger asked. “I don’t want to miss too much school.”

“You made us pack way too much luggage for just a week away,” Sharona agreed.

“We’re not returning to the city till that smell goes away and the worst damage is cleaned up. I really hope the authorities don’t try to restart normal life as soon as possible to try to prove a point about being an indestructible city and not letting our enemies win. For all anyone knows, that dust and debris have poisoned the air, water, and ground like at Chernobyl and Three Mile Island. Better safe than sorry.”

The line moved forward as the people closest to the water got on the boats that had been going back and forth since the maritime evacuation began, and Mancika slowly rose to her feet and walked the short distance to her party’s new place in the queue. She could almost see the water through the most microscopic breaks in the crowd, but she wasn’t home-free yet. Only when she was on the other side of the Hudson would she feel truly safe and relaxed again.

***

Dvora stumbled into her apartment and immediately collapsed onto the threadbare secondhand davenport. The smell of smoke still clung to her, H.G., and the girls, and that acrid scent was lodged in her sinuses, even many hours after leaving the stretch of road across from the Pentagon. Those few miles had been the longest journey of her life, a far worse experience than being stuck in barely-moving traffic this morning. At least the aborted trip hadn’t been permeated with pervasive terror of another plane coming in for a violent crash landing and taking out everyone on the road this time, since not a single plane had appeared in the skies.

“Will we have to leave the city?” Yael asked. “I don’t want to be here until we know it’s safe.”

“Yes, H.G., we must go away,” Dvora begged. “What happened today seems like an act of war, and Washington is an obvious target for more attacks. British parents sent their kids to safety to escape the Blitz, to say nothing of how Jewish parents with sense and foresight arranged for their kids to go into hiding or sent them into safer countries.” She pressed her hand to her head. “I have a pounding headache.”

“I’ll fetch you some naproxen and a glass of water after I clean up Penina,” H.G. said. “If you’re too shaken-up to move, I can handle calling your siblings in New York to see if they’re okay. Where do you propose we go? With our finances, our options aren’t very good.”

“There’s always our family in Atlantic City.” Dvora glared around the living room. “This might be an opportune time to move out anyway. We’ve almost outgrown this dump. It’s borderline illegal for six people to live in a two-bedroom apartment of this size.”

Yael’s face lit up. “Can we really move to a bigger place and get a real house with a yard? All the other kids at school live in houses. I can’t invite any friends over because our apartment is so small, and we don’t have many nice or new things.”

“I want a big house too,” Tehilla agreed. “I can have a lot more toys, a puppy, a kitten, and a bunny. But I don’t need my own room. I like sharing with Yaeli.”

Dvora fixed her husband with a meaningful look. “You see, H.G.? Even our girls know this is no way to live.”

“How can we afford a house when we have to spend most of our income on more important things?” H.G. asked. “It’d probably be different if we hadn’t had so many kids so quickly, but we can’t change the past. These girls were obviously all meant to be created at that particular time, even if they were all surprises.”

“I’m not demanding a stupid McMansion in a cookie-cutter suburban housing development. I’d be happy with just a humble townhouse or duplex where we can put down roots and have more space. It’s not fair the girls can’t bring friends home or own too many toys.”

“The High Holy Days are coming up,” Yael said. “We can stay at a nice kosher hotel and try to forgot today ever happened.”

“I need a new Pull-Up,” Penina reminded them.

H.G. picked her up and carried her down the hall to the bathroom while Yael and Tehilla ran into the kitchen to make a snack. Dvora remained on the davenport and closed her eyes, desperately wishing she could just will away the tiny apartment, the strained finances, the indefinitely deferred career, and most of all the memory of the macabre war crime she’d unwillingly witnessed this morning. The sooner she could get back in the station wagon and drive as far away as possible, the better.

***

At long last, the blue waters of the Hudson came into full view with their comforting promise of safety and escape. Boats of all kinds and sizes were lined up in the pier, as far as the eye could see—ferries from multiple lines, tugboats, sailboats, dinner cruise boats, catamarans, Coast Guard vessels, cargo ships, river cruise boats, houseboats, fishing boats, rowboats. Many of the captains and private boat owners shouted out their destinations with megaphones, while other boats had signs with city names in large print. Hoboken, Jersey City, Staten Island, Bayonne, Weehawken, North Bergen, Edgewater, Guttenberg, West New York, Fort Lee. Mancika cared less which city they sailed to, so long as the wind didn’t carry that foul scent across the river and she couldn’t see the grisly hole in the skyline.

“Anyone with luggage, bicycles, oversized objects, put them on my boat,” a sandy-haired man with a bushy moustache shouted. “I’m equipped to carry that kind of weight and have enough space for it. We’ll sort everything out on the other side.”

“Where are you going?” Wilhelm asked.

“My last few trips have been to Jersey City.”

“Then that’s where we’re going too.”

Ammiel pushed the laundry cart up the ramp to the boat, and Wilhelm’s family carried their suitcases aboard. Mancika carefully positioned her grocery bags between the suitcases so they wouldn’t tip over and spill out during the short voyage. Roger set his guitar case nearby, and then they walked back down the ramp and in search of a boat bound for Jersey City.

Mancika’s knees locked into place as she stepped onto a tugboat. Just as when she’d fallen near the pizzeria, her body refused to obey her mind and let her hoist her other leg on board. While she hyperventilated behind the dust-coated mask, Ammiel and Wilhelm grabbed her under the arms and pulled her the rest of the way onto the deck.

“You’ll all need to wear these,” the captain said as he distributed red lifejackets. “Let me know if you need any assistance.”

Ammiel maneuvered Mancika’s arms through each side and tied it in place before attending to his own lifejacket. She slumped against him as the captain pulled up anchor and the tugboat began its passage through the Hudson. Though she knew it was probably a slim possibility, she nevertheless strained her eyes to see if Courtnie were at the pier.

Mancika’s heart caught in her throat when she saw the Statue of Liberty to the south, facing the giant mushroom clouds, the World Trade Center gone. Just this morning, she’d looked down at Lady Liberty from the North Tower, presiding over a beautiful, peaceful skyline, and now the classic view of Lower Manhattan had transmogrified into a heartbreaking warzone.

For so many immigrants, among them her mother, her mother’s older siblings and parents, her great-grandfather H.G. Filliard the First, his mother Kseniya, and her grandfather Levon’s family, the first sight of that green statue had represented their arrival in a land of freedom, safety, and opportunity after enduring so much hardship and being uncertain they’d ever reach that joyous, emotional moment. Now she was seeing the statue in reverse, leaving her behind instead of approaching her, and forced to leave the city to save her own life and get out of harm’s way.

The natural laws of the universe had been reversed and turned upside-down in this terrifying new world. It were as though she and all the other survivors had been violently removed from Planet Earth this morning, flung into an apocalyptic hellscape, and then thrown back unceremoniously to live among people who could never begin to understand those experiences if they hadn’t been there.

When the tugboat docked at the Jersey City pier, Ammiel had to remove Mancika’s lifejacket, and he and Wilhelm practically carried her down the ramp. She fell onto her knees, shaking, as soon as she stepped onto her native state. The air was still blanketed by that disgusting stench on the other side of the river, though it was slightly less strong due to the direction of the wind and not being quite so close to the scene of the crime.

Presently the cargo boat arrived with their luggage, and the captain unloaded everything with the help of recently-arrived refugees. Mancika stared in quiet horror at the piles of suitcases, bicycles, musical instruments and computers in cases, oversized stuffed animals and dolls, little red wagons loaded with possessions, strollers, sporting equipment, duffel bags, totebags, laundry bags, shopping bags, baskets, briefcases, boxes, dollhouses, and a few pieces of furniture alongside the laundry cart that stood out like a sore thumb. But for the radically different time and place, it hauntingly reminded her of the photos she’d seen of confiscated luggage at Auschwitz, things brought by people like her maternal grandmother’s family with the naïve expectation they’d be allowed to keep these valuables, necessities, and irreplaceables selected for the journey into the unknown, so far away from home.

Mancika turned towards the river to watch the panoply of boats coming and going without end. As soon as one boat docked, another took off in its place, and many times they had to steer around one another very closely to avoid collisions. And all the while, the people waiting for a ride off of Manhattan Island continued to congregate at the pier. The mushroom clouds hadn’t diminished either, and only served to call extra attention to the absence of presence and the presence of absence in the iconic skyline that now lived only in memory.

“Ravid and I are going to pick up a moving van and VW bus,” Wilhelm said. “We’ll be back as soon as we can. Once all our luggage is loaded, we can finally have something to eat. I frequently go to Indian restaurants in Jersey City, but spicy food is the last thing any of us need when we probably all have such upset stomachs and rattled nerves. Let’s try a new Afghan restaurant instead.”

Though Mancika had no appetite for any sort of food or drink, her painfully empty stomach and parched throat told another story. She let Ammiel pull her up and help her with walking away from the pier to let the latest group of evacuees disembark. Until the horrific reminders of today’s events were physically removed from her sight, hearing, and scent, she wouldn’t be able to relax and try to start the impossible task of forgetting the unforgettable.

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.