We All Fall Down: The True Story of the 9/11 Surfer (11 page)

“Yes,” she whispered against his cheek. “Yes,” she said again, looking deep into his blue eyes.

~ ♦ ~

“Yes,” she whispered to herself and pulled her hands down, away from her tear-soaked face.
For always…forever.
Her “Yes” was meant for him again, wherever he was, for wherever Pasquale was, he was with her. She knew that and was comforted by the resounding lyric of their lives together—that simple, meant-forever word: “Yes!”

The telephone rang again and again. Louise heard the rings and the low, muffled, not-sure-what-to-say voices in her house.

She’d meant to leave the kitchen. She’d meant to find a place where there was no friend or relative or neighbor there to touch her, to hold out empty, helpless hands. She’d meant to move past the ringing phone, but she stopped, put out her hand, and lifted the receiver.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

And I Picked Up the Phone…

“Louise, it’s me.”

~ Pasquale Buzzelli

“Hello?”

It was Louise’s voice, but it was faint. He couldn’t believe anything could still be that normal—his wife’s voice, the same voice he’d heard nearly every day for so long, as if the world hadn’t just come crashing down around him. “LOUISE!” The word, her name, spilled out of him, from somewhere so deep inside.

There was a sharp gasp from the other end, a fast, drawn-in breath.

“Louise, it’s me,” he hurried on. “I’m okay. I’m alive, all right? I don’t know how, but I
am
alive!”

“Pasquale? PASQUALE!” she screamed, then kept on screaming, until she shouted, “Oh my God! It’s Pasquale. He’s ALIVE!”

There were more screams and people shouting behind her. From Pasquale’s end, it sounded as if the house were full of people, as if a party was going on, but he knew it wasn’t a party. Everyone had gathered there for his wife. They’d all gone to be around Louise, to support her.
My mother and father? Yes, of course they’d be there. And all our friends!
He closed his eyes and leaned over the phone for a minute, envisioning Louise and all those faces around her, everyone there to help her through it.

There was a triumphant laugh at the other end. Louise was not only happy; she was screaming with laughter, as if coming back from some other place. “Where are you?” she demanded in that new, exalting voice.

“I-I don’t know. I don’t know, Louise. I was in the Tower when it came down. I survived, but don’t ask me how. I don’t know. But I’m alive.”

“Right now, where are you calling from?” she asked again, her voice softening, almost cradling him.

“I’m in an ambulance. They said they’re taking me to St. Vincent’s.”

“Are you all right?” she asked, fear again rising in her voice.

“Yes, yes, I’m fine. They just have to check me out—”

“I love you,” she cut in, every word filled with feeling.

“I love you too. Are you okay? I mean, with all of this and the baby, I was worried—”

“I’m fine,” she said. “Come home, Pasquale. As soon as you can, come home.”

And then there was a different voice; someone had taken the phone from Louise. Mike Potenza, a good friend who’d gone to Cooper Union with him and had introduced him to Louise, was on the line.

God only knows how many others are there.

“Christ, man, what happened?”

“I-I don’t know. I was in the building, and it collapsed, but I survived…somehow.”

“Man, you’re unbreakable.”

“I’ve gotta go. I’ll be home as soon as I can. The paramedic wants to look me over. I’ll call, okay? As soon as possible.”

“We’re all waiting, Pasquale. I…we just need to see you to make sure—”

“I’ll be home. Don’t worry. I’ve made it this far. I’ll be there.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

A Long Day

“Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art. It has no survival value;

rather, it is one of those things that give value to survival.”

~ C.S. Lewis.

The ambulance pulled into a side alley at St. Vincent’s. The paramedics wheeled Pasquale out and began cutting off his clothes: his pants, shirt, shoes, and socks—yet more casualties of the day. All his belongings went into a plastic bag they’d placed under his stretcher. He was then passed from hand to hand. Faces bent above him, asking questions. The emergency room was surprisingly quiet though. He’d expected uproar, but there was none.

“Where are your hurt, sir?” A nurse leaned above him, ready to write down everything he said to her.

“Right leg…and my foot hurts. I was in the building when it came—”

But she was gone.

An orderly wheeled him into to a hall. “You’re going for X-rays,” he said as he parked Pasquale’s gurney and vanished as quickly as the nurse had.

It was quiet again for a moment, and then there was another nurse, pushing him into a room, then transferring him to the hard platform of an X-ray table.

A doctor waited nearby.

“I was in the building when—” he tried to tell the doctor.

“We’re set up for casualties,” the doctor recited, interrupting Pasquale. “We’ve been ready for hours, but nobody’s coming in.”

“I came down with the building. Got hit in the head, and—”

But that doctor didn’t listen either. Just as Pasquale was truly beginning to understand what he’d been through, there was no one to tell.

“You’ve got a fracture of the cuboid bone.” Another doctor frowned over his charts as he spoke, and he didn’t look at Pasquale.

Where is everyone? Where are the other survivors, all those people from those buildings? Where are my friends, the men and women I work with? Where has everyone gone if not here?

A few people were being treated for burns off to one side of the room. Others, in other places, were getting help for minor cuts and abrasions.

A nurse applied burn cream to Pasquale’s right calf, then to his back and scalp. His right leg was swollen to almost twice its normal size, but the doctor assured him the swelling would go down soon.

“You’re a lucky man,” said the dark-eyed doctor, looking up from the soft cast he was putting on Pasquale’s foot. “Do you have a way to get home? You don’t want to be here tonight. We’re expecting many injured, and with the relatively minor injuries you’ve sustained, you may end up sleeping in the cafeteria or even a hallway if we run out of room.” He handed Pasquale a pair of crutches and told him to see his doctor in the morning or get to another hospital in New Jersey as soon as possible. “You will need to stay off the foot for four to six months,” he added.

“Maybe…a phone?” Pasquale asked, not sure how he was going to get out of there.

“Hey, Pasquale!” Someone behind him called his name.

Phil, a friend of Mike’s, came bursting through the doors. “I got a call. Heard what happened. What’s going on?”

“Phil?” Pasquale said, glad to finally see a friendly face who would pay more attention to him than to his medical charts. “Hey, I don’t know where you came from, but I can leave, if you can get me home.”

“Not like that you can’t,” he said with a smile, pointing to Pasquale’s immodest, backless hospital gown.

A nurse came in with a bag of what she called “donated wearables.”

Pasquale had a forty-two-inch waist and wore a fifty-two-inch jacket, so he didn’t expect much, but he happened to find a pair of jeans. They wouldn’t button around his middle, but he could pull them on—except for the bad leg; the nurse cut off the pants on that side. There was also a white sweatshirt with a cartoon character on it.
Somebody’s regrettable vacation find
, Pasquale thought as he tried it on. It had never been worn, and while it wasn’t exactly his style, it was good enough to get him home.

“They’re gonna wheel you out front,” Phil said to Pasquale, who sat in a wheelchair in the middle of the waiting room, dressed in his funny shirt and unbuttoned, one-legged jeans, desperately hoping to be rolled out of there soon. “I’ll try to get a cab.”

A nurse pushed Pasquale out through the wide doors to the street.

He wasn’t sure what to expect outside, but what he didn’t expect were the cameras, the shouts, or the crush of media, waiting to get pictures of the victims.

Cameras snapped, and rude, pushy mouths yelled things at him. They seemed to be like vultures or scavengers, waiting for prey.

If he could have, he might have ambled out of that chair and run, as far away as he could get from them. He had never dealt with the media before, but something in him didn’t want to go near them. “Get me outta here!” he called over his shoulder to the nurse. “Anywhere! Just get me away from—”

She turned the chair fast, heading off in the opposite direction.

Phil was back with them, running to catch up. “No cabs anywhere.”

A policeman jumped from a van standing at the curb. “Hey, fella, you need to get somewhere?” he called over.

“How about Gramercy Park? We have to get this guy home!” Phil answered.

The cop nodded and helped Phil maneuver Pasquale and his bum leg into the van. As the doors closed, Pasquale looked back toward the front of the hospital. There were only the figures of the reporters, almost motionless: no screaming ambulances for them to chase and no chaos. He’d come down along with one of the tallest, most well-known buildings in the world.
Surely there have to be other injured people. Surely there have to be more like me…more survivors.

But there was only chilling quiet. Nothing was going on.

All of those people from the buildings—where are they?
And those questions lingered in his mind from the minute he left the hospital to the time they finally reached Gramercy Park and Phil’s apartment.
Where are all the people?

He sat in Phil’s living room.

Phil brought him water and turned on the TV when asked.

The picture came on of the South Tower: a peeling away of the structure; the gigantic fall of concrete and steel. Then there was Pasquale’s building, with the antenna on top, crumbling and melting. There was an almost loop-like video of planes heading straight and purposefully toward the buildings. All of it was so eerily calm, with the blue sky and that bright sunshine behind it—and those planes, flying straight and low and on purpose, becoming fireballs.

His Tower, the North Tower, had been the first hit, but the South Tower had been the first to fall. He’d thought that when the North Tower fell, it had toppled over. He imagined he’d survived because most of the building had fallen away from him. He wasn’t ready for the truth, for what that horrific footage would reveal.

It wasn’t a building falling over. They were
two
buildings
disintegrating
, with forces inside so great that the exterior shell, all concrete, peeled away like a banana. He sat there in awe, not understanding. It couldn’t have been possible for him to live through what he was watching
. It’s just…not possible.
He shook his head again and again.
How could I have survived a twenty-story or more fall at that velocity? Twenty stories! How did I survive the remaining 90 or 100 floors of concrete, steel, wood, pipe, electricity, glass, furniture, appliances, fixtures, computers, mechanical equipment, and so on collapsing on top of me, somehow passing me by?

To a logical-thinking structural engineer, it didn’t make any sense. He hadn’t been found under the rubble, but
on top
of it, looking up at that blue sky. It was as if he’d been the last piece to fall. His parents had raised him Catholic, and he believed in God. He’d prayed at the time of what he thought would be his death. He’d never believed much in miracles, but the questions looming in his head couldn’t possibly be answered by logic of any sort. Quickly figuring the odds of his survival, given all the parameters, he came up with something akin to one in one billion. It was all so far beyond him, why he was still alive; it was simply too much to think about.

A plane had hit the Pentagon, in Washington DC. Another plane had gone down in a cornfield in Pennsylvania. He watched as the horrible pictures, the smoking wreckage, played over and over. His throat tightened with anger, and his hands clenched uncontrollably. There was nothing anyone could have done to protect their country from those heinous monsters, those cowards.

Yes, that’s what they are! COWARDS! What kind of animal must someone be to deliberately murder so many like this? Even animals don’t kill in such cowardly ways.
He watched until he couldn’t bear to watch another minute. He wanted to go home. He wanted to be with his wife, with his family, with his friends. He wanted to be away from the horror.

“A friend of mine, Domenica, is waiting downstairs. She’s got a car,” Phil said, coming into the room and helping him up from the chair. “We’ll get you back to New Jersey somehow. The tunnels are shut down, and the George Washington will probably be jammed. We’ll head north, maybe take the Tappan Zee Bridge.”