One Thousand Years to Forever (2 page)

“
Honey where are you?”

Katherine sighed as she, along with
others, headed down the stairs as orderly as possible.

“
I’m probably on the
59
^th
floor, stairwell B... ”

Another voice in the crowd yelled,
“We are on the 58
^th
floor... ”

“
58th floor and moving. What
happened?”

John MacNamara was on one of the
fire engines making its way to the World Trade Center. He was a
Battalion Chief for the borough where they lived. “Honey, first
listen, I’m sorry about this morning; second, I love you; third,
keep moving. Don’t let anyone tell you to stop. Keep all that are
with you moving. We are getting there as quickly as possible. Help
is on the way.”

She listened to her husband and
knew he wasn’t telling her what she wanted to know just to keep her
moving. She knew whatever had happened was bad, beyond words, and
he knew it may freeze her. “You’re not telling me what happened...
”

She could hear someone yell. “My
Mom just called me, we, New York is under attack. A plane hit us...
”

Another said, “It must have been an
accident... ” They had no sooner said that when they felt the
building shake again. Someone swore and Katherine yelled, “Keep
moving, we have to keep moving.” They kept going down the stairs,
flight after flight. Moving faster, but still orderly.

They had reached the
34
^th
floor when Katherine’s phone rang again. “Kat,
you’ve got to keep moving, we are here, I’m coming in and I’m
coming up your stairwell. Keep moving... ”

“
Help’s on the way, keep moving,
we have to move... ” They kept it as orderly as they could, until
someone screamed, “The South Tower has been hit!” And then people
started to run until someone from below screamed up, “Don’t run!
Keep going steady... ” then “Kat! Kat, are you up
there?”

Katherine yelled, “Yes!” and ran
into the arms of her husband first, and then her father and
father-in-law. All four hugged as people filed past.

John looked into the eyes of the
woman he had known all his life. The girl he had teased in school
who had turned far too many heads of the guys when they hit high
school and who had finally said ‘yes’ to his invitation to their
junior prom. From then on they had been together. He had a feeling
that unless he was incredibly lucky he wasn’t going to make it. He
was in here, not just to rescue his wife, but to get as many out as
possible... so he wasn’t going down the stairs with her.

“
Honey, you have to get out. I
have to go on.”

Katherine looked at her husband and
knew he wasn’t going to telling her anything.

“
What happened?”

John tried to listen to the traffic
on his radio from the NYPD. “The South Tower is... ”

The transmission was lost in the
noise that was hitting them. People stood still in stairwell B. All
that could be seen was flashlights from rescue workers and from
people on the stairwell. An occasional curse could be heard but it
was amazingly quiet considering what was going on. People moved
with calm and courtesy as if sensing that if these were their last
moments on earth, they were going knowing that they didn’t panic,
didn’t mow down their fellow neighbors on the stairs. Some were
hurt and were being carried by others who were trying to get them
out. The fire fighters who had come up with Katherine’s husband
directed and continued to move up the stairs with the grim
determination that they were going to do their job.

John looked at his Kat. “I need to
move, you need to move, get moving now. Dad, Da, go with her...
”

Both father and father-in-law
looked at John, knowing what he knew. “We will get her
out.”

For the first time, Katherine
started to cry. As she was ripped from John’s arms she started to
scream. “No, I’m going with you. I’m a EMT, I can help!” Katherine
searched for straws to grasp to stay with the man she loved more
than life itself. Knowing what he knew... he would stay and she
would go, but not without a fight.

John knew she would say this. “No,
you can’t. You don’t have an air pack and I’m giving you an order.
Go, now! Go or I will write you up when I get back to
headquarters.”

Katherine was screaming as she was
pulled away from him and then all of a sudden she was lifted up off
the floor and was being held by a stranger.

Colum looked down at John MacNamara
and felt pain. Felt the pain that John felt, because he knew he was
going to his death. “I promise to get her to safety... I promise to
watch out for her and watch over her, from now on.” Then silently,
“I will take care of her and your children, don’t worry. Your
memory will be honored.”

John looked up into the eyes of the
man who held his wife, who for the moment was quiet. The man was a
giant. Standing at least 6’ 8”. He looked like that guitarist,
Peter Steele. Maybe that was who it was, with long black hair, high
cheekbones. “Thank you, get her and as many as you can out... I
have to go on.”

These two men gazes locked one last
time, and then Colum clasped John on the shoulder. The moment he
moved, Katherine started to scream and kick again. “Put me down!
Let me down! I have to go with him... ”

Colum listened to her for the next
thirty some odd floors as she screamed, kicked and hit him. As they
made their way down the stairwell, they felt the South Tower come
down. More people screamed and started to panic. Colum yelled out
for them to keep moving, not to run. Katherine had stopped hitting
him. She was just whimpering by the time they reached the bottom
floor. He got everyone who was with him out and away from the
building, along with her father and father-in-law. They got up to
one of the rescue trucks when the ground started to shake. He was
about to put her down when he thought the better of it and moved
the small group he had guided, further away.

They watched as the North Tower
start to pancake down, dust billowing up like a cloud. He yelled,
“Run!” They turned and ran as far as they could. He could feel
Katherine cry as he turned the corner. As the last of the building
came slamming down Katherine let out a wail and beat on his back,
dug and pounded on him with every bit of strength left in her. He
let her down and held her against his body to protect her from the
blast of debris that spread all over the area and them. They made a
tight huddle covering one another as the dust and parts of the
building rained down on them, then all was quiet. They all stood
there, still, no one saying a word or moving and then one by one
they all let go and looked around. What met their eyes was complete
destruction like nothing anyone had ever seen. It looked like the
city had been annihilated.

Colum gently let Katherine go. She
looked up at him, her face a mess but beautiful to him. She looked
the same as she had each of the lifetimes she had been with him,
and taken from him. This time he had won. He had loved her, for a
thousand years and more, and he was determined not to lose her this
time.

Katherine didn’t know what to
think, what to say. She stood with destruction surrounding her
beyond anything she had ever thought she would see in her lifetime.
She looked up at the man, the giant who had carried her out of the
North Tower like she was nothing. He now stood looking at her,
covered in dust, all a greyish white. All that was visible were his
eyes and mouth.

“
Why?”

Colum looked down at Katherine. He
knew what she was getting at but he wanted to hear her voice
because he knew it would be a while before he would become part of
her life again.

“
I beg your pardon?”

“
Why did you save me? I wanted to
be with my husband, I could have helped him... ”

Colum wanted to pick her up and
shake her. She was as stubborn as she had always been, she just
didn’t know this was her make-up down through the ages.

Colum watched as her father and
father-in-law turned and touched her on the shoulder. They spoke in
unison, “Had you stayed with him, your children would have ended up
being without both parents.” Both had tears spilling down their
cheeks, making paths through the grayish white dust that covered
all of them. Chief MacNamara leaned into the shoulder of
Katherine’s father. Katherine’s father wrapped an arm around his
daughter.

Colum watched as the range of
emotions hit her. Others in the group just stood, trying to take in
what had just happened. Some were trying to contact family members
to tell them they were safe.

Colum saw Katherine go from mad to
all of a sudden knowing what her family had said was true. She let
out a wail and collapsed, beating the ground. Both her father and
her father-in-law dropped to their knees, covering her with their
sobbing bodies.

Chief MacNamara looked up at the
man who had carried his daughter in law down those thirty-four
flights like it had been nothing and saw anguish. “I want to thank
you for saving her. I don’t know what’s in store for us, whether we
will find my son, but at least their children still have a
mother.”

Colum looked down at Katherine who
was fighting off her own father as she rose to her feet and started
to run to the rubble. “John!” She screamed. “John!”

She was met by police officers who
tried to pull her back but Colum and the men of her family were
behind her and soon all were among the searchers, listening as the
PASS Devises from the fallen firefighters air packs announced with
the shrill scream the location of those closer to the top. Others
could be heard but deeper beneath the depths of the rubble. They
were soon digging through the rubble with bare hands, and anything
they could lay their hands on, finding survivors and
victims.

Hours later, someone found a part
of some stairs and their beams, and then they found a cluster of
bodies... all like they were just sleeping, all curled up.
Katherine was on top of the searchers before anyone could pull her
off. Colum heard her wail. He ran to her and caught her as she fell
on top of the body of her husband. She looked up to the sky that
was black with the night, but lit up with the brightness of the
searchlights. She screamed to the heavens over and over, clutching
on her husband’s body, and then on Colum’s as he held her tighter.
Holding her as she cried and screamed in turn. If it had been
possible he would have brought her husband back to life. He had no
joy in the fact that he had saved her and that her husband had to
die so that he could have her. He could have taken her husband up
in his arms also, saved him too. He was more than capable of doing
so much, but he had gone with the sole purpose of saving her.
Saving her so she would be with him some day and possibly change
her. That way he wouldn’t have to go through eternity without his
mate any more.

She looked up into his face and so
softly said, “Why?” Great sobs raking through her body.
“Why?”

Katherine let her fist beat on the
chest of the man who had saved her. Then she let her head fall and
rest on his chest as she whispered “Why?”

* * * * * * *

Colum stood off in the distance
from the group of mourners as they lay John MacNamara to rest. It
was raining that morning but as they clustered around the grave
site, the sun came out and a rainbow seemed to be resting right on
the group of mourners. Colum watched as Katherine looked over at
him. Travis stood behind him. “She is still the same, Sir, still so
beautiful.”

“
Yes, Travis, still beautiful. A
bruised rose but still beautiful.”

Katherine spoke to her brother and
pointed to the man standing off to the side. “He’s the one who
carried me out of the building.”

“
I want to go thank him and ask
him to come to our home.”

Katherine looked over at the man,
she had never found out his name. She told her brother that that
would be fine. But when they looked again they were
gone.

William O’Brien looked at his
sister and then at where the men had been standing. “They were
there weren’t they?”

Katherine looked around. “Yes...
”

As the service finished, the priest
walked up to her, saying a few quiet words. Katherine tried to
comprehend that it was truly over. When they left, her husband’s
coffin would be lowered down in the ground. But for the moment it
was still there. As the bagpipes started their mournful cry, their
sound reaching her ears and going up to the heavens as if to take
her husband’s soul away from her, Katherine shrugged off her
brother and father’s hands, and fell over the coffin crying. The
tears came hard. They tore from her as she cried and then screamed.
Then she beat on the coffin. She felt hands pulling at her. She
didn’t care. She would mourn as she wished. It was almost as if the
Priest understood because she heard him speak, ever so softly to
the men of her family, and they stopped bothering her.

William O’Brien, one arm in a sling
and a cast on his leg, stood back from his sister like the Priest
had told him to do. He looked around to see if he would see that
giant again. Nothing. It was like that man and the one next to him
had disappeared into thin air.