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I was asleep. I had worked 3p-midnight the night before, and was sleeping in. Mr. ChiOJenn called and woke me up in the morning and said, "Get up and go turn on your TV, someone just flew a plane into the WTC". I said, "So what" and went back to sleep. It didn't even register what he had said, because i was dead asleep. An hour later, he called again, and left a message on my machine that I might want to call my bf Erin, and see if she was ok-she lived in NY at the time. I rolled over, and went back to sleep. An hour later he called again, left a message saying that they were evacuating his building and he'd call me later. I finally got up, and was mad, b/c I couldn't understand why he was calling so much and giving me a play-by-play of his day. So, I get up, go into the living room, and turned on my TV-and all I saw was black smoke over NY-the towers had both just collapsed. I just sort of sank to the ground and screamed "Oh my god, what's happening!". I tried to call him-no answer. I tried to call my parents-no answer. Needless to say I was so scared. I was shaking and crying-I just felt so lost. I called my bf's mom and luckily she had heard from Erin, and she was ok. But I remembered that I had a friend who is in med school, and his wife, who is a nurse-and they were vacationing in NY at the time. No one knew how to get ahold of them. It turns out they were ok, and they went to the hospitals to help out. I called my friend Amy, and she had no idea what was going on. b/c she had a final that morning and hadn't seen the TV.
I was in shock all day. I had to work that night, and the floor I was working on was the post-partum floor-moms and their new babies. I kept looking at all these new babies, and thinking-what kind of world have you come in to?? Mr. ChiOJenn came over that night and we both cried and watched TV and tried to make sense of our world. I was scared to go to sleep that night. What blows my mind is that our grandkids will ask us where we were that day and what were we doing. I kept saying-this is like Pearl Harbor, but this stuff is only supposed to happen in the past, like to our grandparents-but not to us.
I'm crying as I write this and as I read all your stories. I still can't watch footage of the second plane crashing into the building. But I love America and thank God everyday that I live here.
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