We All Fall Down: The True Story of the 9/11 Surfer (13 page)

Where did they all go? Where are my friends? Where is my world? What is buried beneath that horrible, terrible silence out there?

Pasquale Buzzelli, lying on his couch in the darkness all alone, began to cry. He tried to stop but couldn’t. He had never experienced that type of crying before. His return home had been like a funeral, like grieving, though it should have been a celebration of life. He’d been surrounded by family and friends. He had been consoled. Now that he was alone, though, all of that seemed different. He had choked back tears before, but this was a cry he couldn’t control. Rage poured out of him. There were pictures he couldn’t shake from his mind. There were questions and answers he didn’t want to face.
My friends! My co-workers! Where are they?
He couldn’t stop the tears.
Pat? Steve? God, how many of them? Why just me? WHY JUST ME? God, why only me?!

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

I Survived…Now What?

“For once in my life, I could not think beyond that moment. I was always the type of person who thought ahead...What next? What will I need to do tomorrow, next week, and this year to provide for my family and to grow as a person? These plans and thoughts were absent from me, and all I could do was live in the past and what had happened and question why. Why me? Why did it happen?”

~ Pasquale Buzzelli

He finally cried himself into a fitful but very welcome sleep, waking a couple times and struggling with his tortured mind to regain the sanctuary of blessed slumber. Questions assaulted his thoughts in every waking moment:
Was that all a terrible nightmare? Did I just fall asleep on the couch? Did that actually happen?
As much as he wanted it to have just been a horrible dream, the pain in his leg and his immobility would quickly remind him of what had happened, that it was all, in fact, all too real. He was actually alive, and he had really fallen twenty or so stories. Yes, a building had landed on top of him…but he was alive.

Pasquale awoke in the morning with a terrible headache, but he forgot about the throbbing annoyance as soon as he turned on the TV.
Have they found anyone else?
he wondered.
What if I am the only one? Sixteen of us were together, trying to get out. How the hell could I be the only one who made it? There were so many people in that Tower. Why me? Why did I, of all people, get out?
These thoughts began to consume him. He had turned on the TV hoping to hear that more survivors had been found, but that was not the case; all the reporters and journalists and rescuers had to report was the ever-increasing death toll.

Louise woke early and immediately went down to see Pasquale, to make sure he was really there, alive, and in their home. She had wanted to check on him throughout the night, but her pregnancy made it difficult to go up and down the stairs. She also had trouble getting in and out of bed, due to the constant aching and soreness that accompanied being seven-plus months pregnant. As she walked into the family room, she heard the television on. In a calm, soothing voice, she said to Pasquale, “I’m going to make some coffee. You want some?”

Pasquale was happy to see her, but at the same time, he was angry. He had always taken care of her during her pregnancy, and now she was having to care for him. “How are you, Nunu?” Pasquale asked. “Did you sleep okay? Here. Sit down. I’ll get up and make you breakfast” He motioned to her to sit as he attempted to stand, a nearly impossible feat since he could not support his weight on his damaged right leg, infuriating him all the more.

Louise poured water into the coffee maker while shooing Pasquale away. “No, no! Let me make coffee for my husband.” As soon as the words left her lips, she began feeling awkward and worried that he might think she was acting strangely.
What the hell is wrong with you? You don’t talk like that. He is going to notice,
she thought. Before he could say anything by way of an objection, Louise tried to change the subject. “Brittany refused to get out of bed. She must be worn out, the poor dog,” she said, shaking her head. After a moment, she thought he may have forgotten about her acting strangely and felt safe asking, “How did you sleep? Want me to make you some scrambled eggs and toast?” She grabbed a frying pan and started cracking eggs into it before she ventured, “How is your leg?”

“It still hurts, but I’ll be okay. The doctor at the ER said I should get an X-ray today, so—”

“Today?” Louise interrupted, all thoughts of keeping it casual leaving her mind. “Not today! You can’t go today!”

“Why not?” Pasquale asked, feigning naïveté, as if he didn’t know why she could not bear for him to leave the house.

“Because it’s raining, Pasquale! You will slip on those crutches and break your neck.”

“Louise, it’s just a little rain.”

“It’s a
lot
of rain, and you should not be walking on that leg anyway. You know what? Why don’t I call Dr. Volpecella and see if she’ll come over and take a look at you?”

Pasquale was about to tell her there was no way in hell he was going to allow his doctor to be inconvenienced for
his
sake, but then he saw the look in his wife’s eyes. He could see the apprehension on her face, and nothing else mattered to him but making her feel at ease. “Doctors don’t usually make house calls anymore,” Pasquale said quietly.

“Don’t worry about it. I will call her office and tell her what happened to you and see if she minds stopping by for a few minutes. I am sure she won’t care.”

Before Pasquale could protest, she picked up the phone and dialed the number. As soon as she told the doctor that Pasquale had been in the World Trade Center Towers the day before, Dr. Volpecella said she would be right over.

Louise felt she had to stay close to him. There were so many feelings going through her head, from the joy of being pregnant to the relief that her husband was still alive to the pain from knowing so many people had lost their lives. Wives had lost their husbands, children had lost their parents, and parents had lost their children...so many lives lost for no reason.

As much as she wanted to just be thankful she had her husband there with her, how could she feel joy when there was so much horror and sadness? Still, despite her feelings of guilt that she did not feel unadulterated joy at a time like that, there was no way she was going to let her husband go out and risk falling in the rain. It may not have been a completely rational fear, but when she remembered the pain of the previous day, being rational was not an option.

Within the hour, the doctor was on the Buzzellis’ doorstep.

Louise answered the door. “Hello, Dr. Volpecella. Thank you so much for coming over to check on Pasquale! I hope it isn’t too much trouble for you.”

“Oh, it’s no trouble at all,” she responded. “Where is he?”

“He’s in the family room, on the couch. He won’t admit it, but I know he must be in a lot of pain. His leg is so swollen,” Louise told her before leading her to Pasquale.

“Thank you so much for coming here, Dr. Volpecella.” Pasquale tried to stand up to greet her.

“Don’t you dare get off of that couch until I’ve had a look at you,” the doctor admonished, wagging her finger at him. When he obediently sank back onto the couch, she smiled at him. “Now, tell me what happened here.”

“It’s my leg.” He pointed to it, and she sat down to examine it. They were silent for a moment before Pasquale said, “I don’t know how I made it through all that with just a broken leg.”

“Yes, you were so lucky to make it out of there before the building fell,” she said, checking his ankle for damage.

“He was
in
the Towers
when
they fell, Doctor,” Louise explained.

Dr. Volpecella said nothing for a second before it dawned on her. She sat straight up and looked at Louise. “What?!” she exclaimed. “He was
in
the building when it fell?”

Louise nodded, and the doctor looked back at Pasquale, flabbergasted.

He tried to avoid her eyes because he really did not want to talk about the previous day. Instead, he stared intently at the images on the television. Even now, after living through it, those horrible images and videos looked like something Hollywood had concocted, something out of a movie: the clear blue sky, the building standing tall, and then the plane coming in, so fast and yet so slow at the same time.

“So, Doctor, how is his leg?” Louise asked after a few seconds.

“What?” the doctor asked as she snapped out of a trance. Still staring at Pasquale, she went on, “Oh yes, his leg. It should be okay. He should definitely get an X-ray but there doesn’t seem to be too much damage. Now tell me, Pasquale, how the hell did you come out of that building alive?”

Pasquale could barely stop himself from sighing before he began to tell her exactly what had happened to him barely twenty-four hours earlier. She listened intently, alternating between shocked gasps and head shakes as he told her everything he could remember. They talked for a little while longer before Dr. Volpecella had to leave.

Before the doctor had even reached the door, Pasquale’s eyes snapped back to the TV. Though he knew it would do him more harm than good, he could not stop himself from watching the planes flying into the buildings. Over and over he watched, hypnotized by the horror as he stared at the destruction of the Twin Towers and saw all those people trying to race the clouds of choking smoke. No matter how much he wanted to, he could not pull himself away from it. He could not relate to the sights and sounds on the TV, but he had the banged-up leg, burns, and bruises to prove to himself he had been there.
Things like this don’t happen in real life,
he thought,
or at least they didn’t…until yesterday
. He watched it all over and over. He felt his heart beating rapidly and pounding in his chest, yet he was compelled to keep watching, all the while wondering if they would find more survivors, thinking,
Did any of my co-workers make it out alive?

After a while, the doorbell rang, interrupting these thoughts. Louise hurried to answer the door once more. She opened it to see Antonia standing there, with a casserole dish in her hands. Ugo was beside her, loaded down with Tupperware full of pasta, chicken cutlets, and salad.

“How are you, Louise?” Antonia asked, putting her hand on Louise’s belly. “You are strong, yes? How’s la babe?”

“Yes, I am fine, Mama Buzzelli. Come in.”

“Good, good. Now where is Patsy?” Antonia asked before she stepped through the doorway.

Louise knew the question was rhetorical, so she asked Ugo if she could help him carry anything.

“No, no, Louise.” He shook his head at her. “You go sit down and relax.” He made his way into the house and said hello to Pasquale before putting the food down in the kitchen. After he did so, he hugged Pasquale and sat down next to him.

Father and son made small talk while Antonia took control of the situation. She bustled around her son’s house as comfortably as she would have her own kitchen, grabbing plates and silverware so she could make sure her son and his pregnant wife would be stuffed to the point of discomfort.

Pasquale felt like his stomach might explode if he ate another bite, and before his mother could set yet another plate of pasta in front of him, he mentioned that he needed to go to the hospital for an X-ray.

Because a steady rain continued with no sign of stopping, Louise once again protested. She did not want him going out, but when Ugo offered to help him, she could not object. If anyone could keep Pasquale safe and return him to her, she knew it was his father.

~ ♦ ~

They drove through the rain-wet streets to the hospital. When they entered the emergency room, they were surprised to find that it was quiet. It was quite eerie, and Pasquale felt pangs of guilt once more as his eyes took in what appeared to be a repeat of the scene at St. Vincent’s the day before. Doctors and nurses, all very calm, bustled around, but they basically ignored Pasquale.

When they finally asked him what was wrong, Pasquale began, “I was in Tower One when it came down, and the ER doctor I saw told me I should come back and get checked out.” As the words left his mouth, even he could not believe them. When the doctor pressed him for more information, he went on to describe his injuries and how he’d sustained them, telling his story while the televisions posted around the emergency room recounted the events of the previous day. He told his story once again, only half-concentrating on it when those repeated scenes of destruction caught his eyes once more.

Eventually, the doctor came back with no information beyond what Pasquale already knew: “Put no pressure on that foot for eight weeks.”

What a useless trip this was,
Pasquale thought. It made him angry that he’d had to recall and repeat, yet again, the events of the worst day of his life, only to hear advice he’d already been given.

Luckily, some of Pasquale’s family had arrived at their home while he was wasting his time at the hospital, giving him a respite from his depressing thoughts. His Aunt Mima and Uncle Tony were there, and he’d just missed his Aunt and Godmother Anna, who’d driven all the way up from Hoboken with the priest from the parish to see him. Those who were still there hugged and kissed him, holding on to him as if they felt they
had
to touch him, to make sure he was real.