sTTanford

My friend wrote this. It paints a more realistic picture than that from CNN.

The Wed, 12am~2am recount is gruesome. Be warned.

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Aftermath of a National Tragedy:

A Med Student Journal Entry

Tuesday, September 11th

9 am-11 am

Waking up in the middle of another captivating Pediatric Grand Rounds, I was glad that I managed to catch a few zzz's that would help me get through my 6 am to 6 pm 12-hour day...I walked out of the auditorium filled with NYU doctors, residents, and medical students, and suddenly remembered that I was also on-call tonight, meaning I would have to stay later in the hospital and pretty much have a 16 hour day. "Damn this is going to be a long/exhausting day," I remember thinking to myself, not realizing what an understatement of the century that was.

Heading back to the hospital to check on some more of my patients, I ran into my med school classmates Josh and Eric, and Josh yelled to me that an airplane had just crashed into the Twin Towers. Swearing in disbelief, I ran outside the hospital on 30th Street and First Avenue to see for myself. Not wanting to believe, I looked south, and saw a huge plume of dark, black smoke rising from the Financial District. My stomach flipped and my heart stopped, and instantly I grabbed my cell phone to call my friend Jon, who works on the 42nd Floor of one of the Twin Towers...there was no service, in what was to be the first of a huge communications blackout

I ran up to my apartment across the street, where my roommates Rick, Dan, and my visiting brother Stan told me the second plane had hit...Not knowing what to do, we turn on the television and try to make more calls, still with no luck. Chaos was everywhere in the streets, and as I headed back out to the 9th floor of Tisch Hospital, my roommates and brother ran outside to see everything for themselves.

Back at the hospital, the residents and attending told all the students that we didn't need to stay, and we should go out to see if there is anything that we could do as medical students, or as volunteers....

11 am-2 pm

The next hours were a blur, as I ran back to the apartment to watch more TV updates in my empty apartment. Eventually, I realized I was alone, my brother was nowhere to be found and my roommates where already dressing in scrubs and joining other NYU Medical students. A bunch of us took off for the Bellevue Hospital ER, a Level 1 Trauma Center just 4 blocks south of Tisch Hospital and on the way some students told me that the two Twin Towers had completely crumbled. The news never hit until hours later...

At the Bellevue ER where there was a controlled chaos going on, literally hundreds of doctors, nurses, med students, and volunteers poured through the doors and got dressed in surgical scrubs and gloves. Eventually the reality sank in that there were about 150+ medical professional in the ER and not a single patient. A stressed-out ER attending who is tripping over all the well-intentioned but space-filling volunteers yells to all non-essential personnel to leave or get out of the way, and some medical students including myself are rounded up for other emergency tasks. Five of us headed out to the front of Bellevue, where we establish a makeshift triage-crowd control-patient care group. Some of us escorted the patients who were showing up for actual appointments, others joined the cops in keeping the hordes of people who were pouring into the hospital trying to find out news about loved one, and others helped the literally thousands of blood donors get in an orderly line and begin the process for blood donation.

By the time noon hit, the word got out that the hospital only wanted O+ and O- blood because there were too many people in line. With the situation stabilized and the hospital emergency network more established, some of us medical students ran back to Tisch Hospital in the hopes of being more useful...the terror and fear is finally starting to hit all of us, and I began to feel like I was in a war zone. I tried again on my cell phone to reach my friend Jon in the World Trade Center and got his answering machine. In despair, I yelled a quick prayer of hope into the phone, begging Jon to call me back and praying that he was safe and got out before the collapse. Then when I arrived back home to change into hospital scrubs for the certain emergency ahead, I had a sheer moment of panic, realizing I still didn't know where my brother Stan was. "Where the hell is he....please God tell me he didn't go down to look at the World Trade Center," I prayed as I ran out the door to join the medical students assembling outside the medical center

2 pm - 8 pm

We found out an emergency triage/holding area had been set up at Chelsea Piers on the West Side of town, but sketchy reports about whether they actually needed volunteers and whether a security shuttle would pick us up to bring us over there came in. Some medical students became frustrated at the inability to actually help out, some decided not to wait for the the shuttle and set out on foot across the city, and others like myself stood there helpless, staring at the growing black cloud of death that grew higher and higher above Manhattan. All the medical students shared their fears, their dreams, their frustrations at being completely useless right now, and slowly (almost as if a movie set was being assembled around us) a setting of near martial law developed around us. Ambulances screamed up and down the street, cop cars were everywhere. A fire truck flew down the wrong way of a one-way street as people were crying and hugging on the street. A nearby radio blared that the only way to currently leave the city was on the Outbound George Washington Bridge, and I quickly began to realize that we are all living in a state of military lockdown.

As I was feeling most helpless, my brother finally appeared out of nowhere. Stunned, I hugged him as he told me that he had been walking southward towards the World Trade Center to get a better view of the disaster. My brother told me how he watched in horror as he had a close-up view of the last remaining Twin Tower becoming a 110-story twisted metal fireball bending to gravity and killing thousands of people. He told me how he ran away in fear with a mob of New Yorkers beside him as the dust cloud from the impact grew larger and larger, and how as he got far enough away he got into an argument with a hysterical New Yorker who immediately wanted to go and bomb every Arab country.

Speechless, I hugged him again and tried to decide whether I was angry at him or so thankful to God that he was safe....I quickly decided on the latter, realizing that thousands of people across the city would never get that luxury of knowing their loved ones were safe. And so my brother and I went home, with the phones finally working, and stayed transfixed to the TV as the scenes of death unfolded over and over again. My inbox began filling up, my answering machine filled with messages from worried friends. We finally got in touch with our family and were lucky enough to be able to call a few select friends on our unreliable land line. AOL Instant Messenging became the saving emergency communication method for the time being

Just before I headed back to the hospital to see my last patients, even though the Pediatrics Residents/Attendings told me I didn't need to be there, I got an AOL message from my friend Katie:

"Albert, Jon's okay...they are all okay, they are staying uptown right now with friends."

Quietly thanking God (since I was too tired to do anything else), I headed back to Bellevue Hospital, even though the city was already filled with emergency heroes and I didn't need to be another one.....I knew that half the firefighters who walked into that burning mess would never come home, and it nauseated me to my soul knowing that their bodies were definitely obliterated beyond belief. It was easy to be thankful for the smallest things after knowing the unbelieveable horror others were going through. My brother was alive, my parents were alive, and my friend who had been closer to hell than I will ever be managed to get out of a monstrous steel death trap after a plane had crashed just meters above his head....I allowed myself to be content for a few minutes.

Then, I quickly crossed First Avenue going back to Bellevue Hospital, where I helped out briefly supplying blood bags and helping phlebotomists deal with the overwhelming crush of donors who were desparately trying to do what little good they could during a time where everything seemed meaningless. Hundreds of people were still in line when I left, and I was overwhelmed by this sea of human courage I was seeing right before me. After helping out in Bellevue, I headed back four blocks north to Tisch Hospital to at least say hi to my pediatric patients for the day. As I used my stethoscope to listen to the heart of one sick girl with a high fever, I glance over to the TV and was horrified to see clips of person after person falling stories to their death, screaming in shock, and the wave of helplessness hit me again. Finally, I said goodbye to my patients and my pediatrics team at sign-out session, and as I left Tisch Hospital I immediately headed north to the safe house where my friend Jon was staying after escaping from the World Trade Center. With the great black cloud of carnage hanging high in the sky to the south, and sirens blaring everywhere I turned, I was glad that I could finally be of some use, however minor, to at least the stable pediatric patients in the hospital.

8 pm - 12 pm

Leaving the hospital, the entire city looked like a ghost town. Besides the occasional police barrier and occasional speeding set of police cars, the streets of NYC, or at least First Avenue, were deserted. It was impossible to catch a cab or bus, since the streets were pretty much deserted, and I ended up walking 30 blocks north on foot. Passing the United Nations, I again began to feel like I was in a war zone as police barriers and the Men in Blue of NY walked by on patrol. I again gave a silent thanks that my parents had not come to the city today, since they had been planning to come to the UN to rally for Taiwan's right to have representation in the UN. Arriving at my friend's house, I finally meet up with my friend Jon and one of his other displaced roommates. Normally one of the most social, outgoing, kind-hearted and friendly guys I've ever met, Jon was pretty much withdrawn and pensive. I had never seen him so somber, his eyes were glassed over, like he had seen Death itself, and he almost seemed to be seeing his life flash before his eyes in a continuous loop. We all joked around a little bit about how Jon and his buddies probably would not be renewing their lease for their amazing penthouse on Greenwich St, which had been the location of many memorable parties. However, it also happened to be one block away from the World Trade Center, and seeing as how their home was now covered in a layer of soot, ash, and God knows what else, it was definitely not fit to live in. From all descriptions, it sounded like their apartment looked similar to what something would look like if it had been next to a erupting volcano.

Jon and his friend were drinking shots, and I didn't blame him...I was almost tempted to drink one or two myself but remembered that I would be in the hospital in a matter of hours and thought better of it. Jon and my other buddies gave me the good news that all our friends were safe, and that everyone had been accounted for. With my spirits lifted a little higher, I said a somber goodbye and hopped a free bus down 2nd Avenue to go back home (all buses and pay phones were free on Tuesday to help people deal with the emergency).

I arrived exhausted at my apartment around midnight, but still watched in tired shock as more scenes of heroism and tragedy were broadcast on CBS. My other roommate Rick came in from his own personal journey, and sat down with me at the TV. We realized that our third roommate Dan was still out there in the city helping out as a volunteer in some emergency area somewhere. As I was about to pass out for a paltry amount of sleep, I learned something gruesome on the news: The general identification morgue for all the bodies, body parts, and crushed remains was being set up right outside my front door, across the street at the Chief Medical Examiner's office (who was also located across the street at Tisch Hospital/NYU Medical Center). Looking out my window I saw a number of large refridgerated trucks rumble by and realized that they were hauling hundreds of bits and pieces of NYC human flesh and organs towards the morgue. I hit the bed, and instantly fell asleep, glad to be able to escape out of the nightmare of September 11th, if even for a few hours. With my last waking thoughts, I prayed that the trucks cooling systems would work, and that the stench of death and decaying body parts would not overwhelm me when I woke up in less than four hours.

Wednesday, September 12th

7 am - 6 pm

The work day at the hospital passed by in a blur, and the three other medical students on my team noticeably were distracted. Our conversations inevitably turned towards the craziness we had seen in the last 24 hours. The hospital was running at half-speed, since the computer system with all the lab values, charts, and drug ordering capabilities had been knocked out. It seems that the main computer running this Midtown Manhattan hospital is for some ridiculous reason located in the southern tip of Manhattan near what used to be the World Trade Center, and is now either knocked out or lying under tons of rubble. The computer techs came around trying to fix the system, but couldn't do it because they needed mouses on the computer in order to try to reboot the computers with a new program; unfortunately, all the computers work on some old-school "light pen" technology where you point and click with an electronic light pen on the screen, so all of the computers didn't have a mouse and couldn't be fixed! My medical students friends and I laughed at the irony in the situation.

As we were busy seeing our patients, doing physical exams, and writing our notes, a gradual stench of smoke and something burning drifted through the hospital. As we began to glance nervously at each other, wondering whether this building was also being hit by a terrorist bomb or act of arson, the announcement came over the loudspeaker:

Attention please, attention please...the hospital is NOT on fire...the burning and smoke you smell is the north wind blowing the smoke up from the World Trade Center disaster site.

We all laughed nervously and quickly finished up our day, as medical students on a non-emergency rotation in a city filled with a million unending emergencies. I headed outside, determined to buy some food for the dwindling supplies in my fridge....

6 pm - 8 pm

Outside the hospital, I suddenly remembered that the temporary morgue, filled with an unimaginable amount of horrible things that at one time might have resembled human bodies, was right next to me and I quickly hurried across the street towards the throngs of sobbing, incredulous passerby and fearful relatives who were being held back by the police and still in total denial. A hysterical doctor in plainclothes grabbed me, jabbering about how she couldn't do anything, how she felt helpless, and how she almost vomited as a not-so-well refridgerated truck had driven by towards the morgue on the corner of First Avenue and 30th Street, with its noxious burden of smoking, charred, and crushed human flesh. Crying, laughing, sobbing, the doctor told me to call those I love and walked away, a glazed look in her eyes.

Walking towards Second Avenue, I passed by one of the many refridgerated trucks that was in standby mode, waiting to be hauled down to Ground Zero of the World Trade Center and drag more body parts out of the wreckage. It might have been my imagination or the garbage can I passed at the same time, but thinking of the nauseating cargo that would soon be inside and perhaps catching a whiff of some rotting garbage, I almost lost my stomach right there on Second Avenue.

I had to get out of there, away from the Medical Center and the East Side/Kips Bay area...I couldn't take it anymore. I had reached my absolute limit and had been spending the last 36 hours surrrounded by death. I was sick of the sirens, the imagined stench of death, the constant bombardment on the television. Determined to find something resembling the warm, welcoming, energetic life of the New York City I once knew, I set out trying to pretend that I was just living a normal night in NYC.

My first goal was to try to get some basic food supplies so I could cook for myself and eat in the next couple of days....the restaurants seemed to be working and delivering, and NYC's famous pizza joints were still open as usual. But I was still a broke-*** med student waiting for a loan refund coming in the mail from the downtown NYU financial office, and the last time I checked all mail service in NY seemed to stop below the quasi-DMZ-line that NYC had set up: As of Tuesday night, NYC police were threatening to arrest anyone who didn't belong below 14th Street for safety reasons. So cooking seemed like a good, cheap, and natural way to get back to living in NYC.

What I saw when I stepped in the local Gristedes was not exactly disturbing, but it was depressing. I saw families walking out with cartons of milk, and bags and bags of toilet paper, and began to realize that NYC was starting to horde. In the greatest city of the world, in a place where you could normally count on running down at 4 am to Chinatown, Koreatown, or the local diner and finding food anywhere, suddenly the supermarkets looked like something out of a third-world country. The bread shelves were completely bare, only a couple of cartons of milk remained. I went to try to get chicken and quickly realized that there was no chicken left on the shelves, no ground beef as well. Everything left in terms of meat seemed to be in the extremes, either crappy-*** hot dogs or steaks and gourmet fish filets. I left the store extremely annoyed and again determined to find some chicken, anywhere. The last thing I needed tonight was to have to stock my shelves with a bunch of hot dogs...however ridiculous that seems to some people it somehow made sense to me.

8 pm - 12 am

I ended up walking all the way down to the limits of where most New Yorkers could get to: 14th Street/Union Square Park, and the scene there almost awed and humbled me. Stretching before me as far as my eyes could see was the largest improptu shrine I had ever seen. Innumerable candles lay around the ground, throwing flickering light on sobbing shaking men and women, people in prayer, people in song, and dozens of flowers, in a park normally filled with skaters, punks, and glowstick artists. All over the ground, there were rolls of butcher paper unrolled with markers next to them, filled with comments ranging from "All Arabs must die....now you'll learn the wrath of our might" to "America brought this on itself...the capitalist pigs government ruling this country caused this" to simple messages of "Love Each Other." It was overwhelming, and with the World Trade Center smoke cloud looming to the south and the warm lights of the Empire State Building to the north, I stopped in the middle of this endless stream of emotions poured out on paper, and prayed for a few minutes. Aftewards, I looked around for awhile, and was interviewed by a Korean film student on what I thought of the last days events. Union Square Park was filled with people, some just looking, some getting high, some just hugging silently....It's still there right now, and will probably be there for a while to come.

On the way back home, I finally found a store that actually had chicken, and I walked back home with a fresh store of chicken and pasta, happier than words can describe. It's crazy how content someone can be with the simple things in life when you realize that hell is in your backyard, and others have much bigger problems to worry about. Walking back home northwards on Park Avenue, I passed by a bunch of bars and restaurants and lounges, filled with laughing, camaraderie, and conversation...at first I was really upset and thought "How the hell can anybody be JOKING or happy right now?" Then I realized this is what I had been looking for: the life and spirit of New York, unbroken by the destruction and death that had suddenly appeared a day ago. I realized that people were just celebrating life, celebrating with friends, co-workers, and loved ones they thought they might never see again, people they had taken for granted. The faceless bastards who had violated our city were unsuccessful in their mission of terror, New York was not afraid and was taking back the streets. I saw a New York filled with people refusing to live behind locked doors, and I fell in love with The City (not the Big Apple like some foreigners call it) all over again...

12 am - 2 am

Upon returning home, I was just setting my shopping bag down when I received a frantic call from my friend Rachel, who was calling me to warn me of a bomb threat made to the Empire State Building...which was only 4 blocks away from me. She was calling on the run, and quickly hung up so she could call other people and get away from any possible bomb blast. People were fleeing the streets all around the Empire State Building, and it would be the first of numerous bomb threats going on the next two days, including bomb threats to Penn Station, Grand Central Station, the American Express Building, and Times Square. My faith in humanity was quickly being peeled away by the pathetic actions of a few sick individuals, it was extremely depressing.

My last hours late Wednesday night/early Thursday morning were the most disturbing so far, and are the ones I think I will carry to me until the day I die. After realizing that the Empire State Building was not going to fall on my head, I found out that some medical students had been called up to volunteer for something that few people were willing to deal with: identify, separate, and pore through the endless stream of body parts being brought up by those "death trucks" I had seen earlier in the afternoon. In the weeks to come, the task of identifying body parts and simply getting the remains back to relatives and loved ones is going to be tremendously difficult, but is so important for the throngs of people outside the hospital who are waiting for some sort of closure. On the one hand, I wish I could take back that decision I made to volunteer for the gruesome task that I took part in that night, but on the other hand I will always remember and honor the memory of this life-changing and indescribable event.

For 90 minutes, myself and some other medical students armed ourselves with morgue gowns and thick yellow rubber gloves, helped weary medical examiners, FBI agents, and other law enforcement officers unload and pore over the decaying remains of the victims of the World Trade Center destruction. Sifting through intestines, shattered bone, torn skin, and a horrifying mess of human mush, searching for some sort of identifying information: a tattoo, a piercing, an earring, even a birthmark that could be possibly used in the months of DNA testing and pathology to come. The stench etched itself onto my soul, a wretched smell of rotting garbage mixed with the odor of something that was definitely flesh, and unmistakably human. My stomach was churning at first, but I quickly got over it....it was my job, I had volunteered to do this, as had all of us. No one should have to go through this, but eventually somebody had to.

New York's finest, the firemen, the policemen, the FBI agents and so many others were gloved and gowned standing at the sidelines, but why would anybody force them to dig through the remains of their own fallen....why after they had already been tortured with the sight of all their comrades who were crushed and wiped out right before their eyes? Grown men were shaking and sobbing, unable to look at the carnage. Full and intact bodies were far and few between, and the stories the seeped through the crowd were heartbreaking and froze everyone to their souls. Stories of a fireman, decapitated but still bearing the company badge and uniform that was now his death robe. Stories of remains found of two or more people who in their final moments, hugged each other and held each other tight....people whose remains were now so pulverized that the two or more human beings had literally had their organs and bones smashed together with their arms locked and intertwined in a final fatal embrace..

I left around 2 am as a new group of medical students came by to relieve those who had been helping out for awhile. Coming back to the apartment, I thought back on the events of the last two days, and let out a sigh....whether it was a sigh of sorrow, one of mental and psychological exhaustion, or one of frustration is still unclear to me, but it felt like a mix of all of those. I showered, cleaning my body but futile in my attempts to psychologically cleanse myself of the horrible memories of the past 48 hours. As I knelt by my bed, just before getting my last 4 of 9 hours in an two-day span, I prayed for those who had lost, those who had found, and those who were no longer with us. I prayed for what was only minutes but seemed like hours. In the end, I had to stop, because I felt it was physically and emotionally impossible to pray for everything....

But strangely enough as I was finally falling asleep, I felt content. New York would go on. My country would rise again, and the United States of America would stand proud, of that I was sure. This is only the beginning of something that has forever changed the world, and this is only one of millions of stories that New Yorkers have to tell. We will always remember and honor those heroes among us and those who are no longer with us. Tomorrow is another day, today is our finest hour. God bless the victims, the workers, and the families, friends of everyone who has been affected.....we will overcome.



--Albert Lin, Class of 2003, NYU School of Medicine