Publius & Co.

September 11, 2001

It's still in my Visor, an entry for September 11, 2001: L's surgery--5:30AM. I put it there sometime before that date.

See, for me, that date already meant something to me. L is my stepmother, and she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2001. She was to have a partial mastectomy and lymphectomy on September 11, 2001, at 5:30AM, at the Bethesda National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland (my father having served in the Navy for twenty years on active duty, and ten in the Fleet Reserve).

I fix computers, under contract, for a law firm in Washington, DC. On that day, I was walking thru the halls to help someone with...something, darned if I can remember what...when I was flagged in the halls.

"Rich!" someone called out, and since Rich isn't my name, I kept walking. "I mean, Victor, sorry...is there a TV set up somewhere?"

There's a conference room with a rear-projection screen TV on the 7th floor, and it's turned on for special events. The OJ trial, election day, USA World Cup games--important stuff.

I told them to go to the 7th floor conference room on the west wing, then asked what was going on. "A plane flew into one of the towers of the World Trade Center," they told me, and headed to the seventh floor.

My first thought was of the B-25 bomber that flew into the Empire State Building at the tail end of WWII. Not too many people know about that; a book entitled The Sky is Falling was written about it, and I recommend it--but I digress.

I returned to my office and tried to log onto CNN.com to get some more info--as I'm sure you know, I couldn't connect. I have lousy radio reception in my office, so I called the gf--she gets pretty good reception at work, and she filled me in on some details.

The second tower had been hit. A plane crashed into the Pentagon. Later, she was the first to tell me both towers had collapsed.

At that, my first thoughts were of my stepmother. You see, she's my stepmother because my natural mother died of (cervical) cancer when I was twelve. I saw how her death affected my father, and I wasn't worried about me going thru that again. I was worried about him going thru it again.

Couple that with the fact she was having surgery at a military hospital...I stuck to my plan to call him in the afternoon. Truth be told, I didn't have a choice. He has no cell phone, and I knew there was no way in hell I'd get him paged at Bethesda--not with what was becoming a national emergency unfolding.

I eventually connected to a British news site, and managed to get some news that way. In the hall, a nearby secretary had her radio tuned to NPR; I gave it a shot in my office and miracle of miracles, I heard the news.

It wasn't good. They were reporting 50,000 people worked each day in the towers, and they didn't know how many got out. Other reports: An airliner crash in Pennsylvania, a truck bomb in downtown Washington, all flights across the country grounded.

You know the rest, so there's no real reason to go over it.

I contacted my father that afternoon, and asked about L's surgery. Turns out she didn't have it. They tell you to be there at oh-dark-thirty, but you'll be in line behind a bunch of other people, and it's like an assembly line. Cart 'em in, cut 'em up, roll 'em out and bring the next one in.

She was next in line, prepped and on the gurney, when things changed. I asked my father how he heard about it, and there were TV's in the waiting room. Like me, his first thoughts were of the B-25 back in 1945, but the circumstances then were very different: The bomber pilot was a cocky pilot, it was foggy, he was disobeying civilian controllers. My father had spent some time posted at NAVSTIC, so he started wondering what was going on. He told me he realized it was an attack when he watched the second plane hit the second Tower, live, on a TV in the waiting room at the Bethesda National Naval Medical Center.

Armed guards started appearing in the hallway of the hospital; doctors started heading out, preparing for casualties from the Pentagon.

L was de-prepped and released to my father. Her surgeon had already received orders to report to the USNS Comfort in Baltimore, sailing to New York, to treat casualties from the World Trade Center.

No, they didn't know when the surgery would be re-scheduled.

As you know, by September 12, we realized there would not be thousands, nor hundreds, nor scores of survivors at the WTC. L's surgeon was helicoptered back to Bethesda (on a military aircraft), and her surgery was performed on the 14th. She's still alive and kicking to this day.

As kids, my brother, sister, and myself didn't appreciate her. After all, she wasn't our real mother.

What we didn't realize, tho, was that she was a real wife and companion to our father. To be honest, it took me quite awhile to realize that.

I was only indirectly affected by the attacks on September 11. A secretary's husband worked in the Pentagon; he died that day. I've worked at the law firm where Barbara Olson once worked. My gf's father has worked for the Washington Capitals since Year One and he knew Ace Bailey.

For me, though, I choose to remember, on this day, my stepmother's life, and her survival.

Posted by Victor at Septiembre 11, 2003 08:56 AM