When I got off the plane in Kentucky the next afternoon, I felt dazed and bewildered. This was home, and it was so familiar. But I'd been away for a month, and I'd seen and done things that would change me forever. It felt strange and disorienting to be without my “combat buddies,” the men and women with whom I'd worked side by side on a job that, I now realized, I'd never really be able to explain to anybody else. We'd shared something that only made sense to those of us who'd been through it, and now I had no one to share it with. I was looking forward to seeing my friends and talking with my family — but I also felt terribly alone.
My first stop on the way home was Daisy Hill Kennel, where my beloved springer spaniel had spent the past month. I hated to leave Savannah in a kennel, even for a short time. But my neighbors Suzanne and Bill Cassity had introduced me to the people at this long-term animal facility right before I'd left for New York, and I felt confident that my pet would be well cared for there. To my amazement, when I went to pick her up, I found notes and letters from strangers who had left not only words of encouragement for me and my colleagues, but also enough money to pay my kennel bill.
I had managed to stay in control for the past four weeks, but now, driving home with Savannah by my side, I felt my emotional walls start to crumble. As soon as I got home, I collapsed, sobbing on my bed as Savannah tried desperately to lick the tears off my cheeks. Life and love were proving to be stronger than death, and I surrendered to a wave of overwhelming sadness as I held Savannah tightly to my chest and allowed her soft fur to soak up my tears.
I fell asleep after this cathartic cry but was wrested awake a few hours later by a ringing telephone. It was my mother, telling me that Dad was close to death. If I wanted to see him again, she told me, I should come to Indiana right away. I'd known my dad had cancer, of course, but when I left for New York City, we'd all thought he was holding his own. Soon afterward, he began a rapid decline, which he and my mother decided to keep secret from me as long as I was in New York. Only months later did Mom tell me that, by sheer will alone, Dad had held on until I got home.
So, the next day, Savannah was back at Daisy Hill and I was back on the road. I spent ten days in Indiana — long enough to say good-bye to my dad, who slipped into a coma the day after I got there. Two weeks after I'd gotten back from Indiana, I returned to New York for my next tour of duty — and I was glad to be there. Maybe staying focused on the city's enormous loss would help keep my mind off my own sorrow.
When I took the taxi from LaGuardia Airport into midtown the afternoon of November 18, I was struck by how much had changed. When I'd arrived in September, the whole city had seemed subdued. Although I had little opportunity to interact with any civilians other than the workers in our two hotels, I had the sense that in the first few weeks after the disaster, New Yorkers were treating one another with special gentleness and care. The few times I managed to stretch my legs in a walk around the block, the famous New York City crowds seemed to graciously make way for me, as though no one wanted to be guilty of a careless shove or a brusque “Out of my way.” I barely even heard a honking horn.
On this return trip, the whole mood of the city seemed different. Traffic seemed faster, more impatient, and definitely louder. Things seemed to be getting back to normal in this bustling, overcrowded city, which I supposed might be considered a good thing.
It wasn't so good for us DMORT workers, though. Our work had always been hard, but now it seemed to be discouraging — and lonely as well. Sometimes it seemed that we were the only ones who knew what was going on behind closed doors while the rest of the world was understandably busy with getting back to normal, even preparing for the holidays.
But the friends and families of the victims were there with us, if only in spirit. They knew that we were working around the clock, and they still hoped that at any moment we would find and identify someone they loved. It was hard on those days when we couldn't and gratifying on those days when we could.
Like my first tour of duty, my second started as a fourteen-day assignment and ended up as four straight weeks — including Thanksgiving. Since none of us got holidays off, the Salvation Army had prepared Thanksgiving dinner for us in their tent, so during a break between shipments from Ground Zero, John Trotter and I made our way through the food line and found seats in the back, near the heater. The golden September days were long over, and the end of that November day had turned cold, rainy, and dreary. I was grateful for the heat and for the cheery attitudes of the Salvation Army volunteers who served us. They seemed almost apologetic that they didn't have better food to offer us, but I saw nothing wrong with the turkey, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, and green beans that they heaped on our plates. Slices of cold white bread were a poor substitute for hot rolls, but several homemade pies had apparently been donated to the workers at the Ground Zero site, and someone had thought to scrounge a few desserts for us folks behind the front lines.
The food was fine, but this was a far cry from the Thanksgiving dinners that John and I were used to, happy occasions that we usually spent with family and friends. Now we were alone and far from home — but at least we had each other.
“I love having you here for company, Emily,” John was saying. “But I wish I was at home.”
I was almost more upset seeing John's pain than feeling my own. John had seemed to grow much older since I'd first met him in September. He had lost some of that sturdy enthusiasm that I so valued in him, and now he talked often of retirement.
At nine o'clock on this rainy Thanksgiving night, John and I were the only people who were eating dinner, so we basically had the place to ourselves. Shortly after we'd carried our trays back by the heater, the volunteers up front dimmed the lights and huddled into their own little conversation group to pass the time until their next “customer” arrived. A minute later, one of them came back and placed a candle in the middle of our tiny Formica-covered table, then backed away without a word. I couldn't help but think about that classic scene from Walt Disney's Lady and the Tramp, where the Italian restaurateurs are trying to create a romantic mood for the canine lovers in the back alley.
John and I weren't lovers, of course, but in the past two months we'd formed a unique bond of friendship that helped sustain us through the seemingly interminable nights when his friends and colleagues were being brought in to him in body bags. He trusted me and the rest of our team to handle his fellow Port Authority officers — and every other victim — as we would our own friends and family. But that night he revealed a deep hurt tinged with anger that I knew had been building for some time.
“You know, Emily,” he went on, “we lost thirty-seven of our guys down there. No police agency in this country has ever lost that many. But nobody seems to really care anymore. When I drive by those billboards praising everybody else, it kinda hurts. And what about the civilian victims? Those poor people were also just doing their jobs.”
I nodded and stared into my coffee. “People who work in the morgue also get used to being forgotten in the grand scheme of things,” I said softly. “We deal with death all the time, but that doesn't mean we're immune to it. Most people think we are, though, so what can you do? You find some way to keep going, and you learn to accept that people from the outside will never know what we're dealing with in here.”
“I know life ain't fair,” John told me. “But this really isn't fair.”
“No,” I agreed. “But you know, there's one little bit of it that does make sense to me. I can see why the families need to be sheltered from the facts. If they actually knew what we had to deal with here, they'd have a clear idea of what happened to the people that died. I can see why they wouldn't want to know.”