Fiction

By Emily Ho

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Editor's Note: Although fiction, this story emerges from the real events of September 11, 2001. Ho writes in tribute to the victims of terrorism, notably those who died that day in the attacks on New York and Washington and later in the wars on terror in Iraq and Afghanistan. Despite being a short story, it took her 10 years to put together.


Remembering -- Part One

BOOOOM...!

I hate airplanes. Their deafening noises always irritate me, especially when they fly so low that you think they'll crash to the ground at any moment.

They look like gigantic monsters in the sky. Just looking up at them terrifies me. Sometimes I even jump from the ground where I'm standing.

I know that I shouldn't be intimidated. After all, I once worked proudly at a big-city fire-station. But that was long ago. Now I'm old and retired.

Why do people keep mentioning my old age? They say, “You look very old”, or “You've gone so gray”, things like that. Of course, I know I'm getting old. That's why I no longer fully control my bladder and why I breathe heavily when walking up ramps. I realize that my days are numbered.

My name is Bobby. Once I was the youngest and most energetic guy at the fire station. A partner on my team, Dave, was the kindest person I'd ever met. A family man, he always brought sandwiches to the station. His wife Jessica prepared them. He talked about saving money because Jessica soon would give birth to their first child.

“Do you want some sandwiches, Bobby?” he always asked me. Just by the smell, I knew he had my favorite sandwiches. They had to be roast-chicken breast.

I never turned down his offer. It was so nice having someone who prepared a lunch for you. That must be one of the good things about having a family of your own.

When Dave handed me sandwiches, the golden ring on his finger always shone like the summer sun. Honestly, it made me feel jealous. At the time, I was single and didn't have many girlfriends.

One tragic day, Dave stopped sharing his sandwiches with me. He and most of my teammates were dispatched to one of the biggest-ever emergency situations. Since I had a slight fever, they left me behind....

BOOOM...! That was the day a huge airplane slashed like claws across the clear, blue sky. It flew so close to the buildings around our station.

Then I heard two more big roaring sounds from afar. I sensed something unusual happening. Frightened and unsure what to do, I wandered nervously in the yard. Then I went into the dormitory and noticed that Dave had left a half-eaten sandwich on his plate when rushing to the fire engine.

For the entire day, I stayed as one of the few left at the station. I'll never forget looking at the street outside -- it filled with billowing dust and petrified people running and screaming, all covered in inches of grime and traces of blood. An unpleasant fuel-smell in the air easily made people dizzy and disoriented.

By dark, only a few firefighters had returned. They looked bizarre and totally exhausted. Some broke down and cried. I tried to comfort my friends, but it seemed like they wouldn't or couldn't hear what I tried to say. I'm not the greatest talker.

Gradually, I worried mostly about everyone who didn't come back, especially Dave. More than a teammate, he was a precious friend.

That night, I didn't sleep well. I trembled and moaned, unable to stop wondering about Dave's safety. The next day at work, I teamed up with another partner, Jay. We were going to look for Dave, and Jay urged me not to worry. But my reliable sixth sense kept telling me that Dave had gone. In my nightmares the previous night, he had cried out in agony, trapped inside a tall building.

Then we arrived at the scene. What a horrendous place! I'd never expected or seen anything like it. This didn't resemble the city of tall buildings covered with shining glass, the place where I'd always lived. Instead we found a massive mess of bent iron and broken concrete dangling from ruins and scattered everywhere.

From my observations and training, I knew that only an enormous explosion could cause such a catastrophe. Of course, by then millions of people around the world knew that two airplanes had crashed into the World Trade Centre towers, causing them to collapse.

Days later, we recovered Dave's fractured body. I found him myself, and he looked almost unrecognizable, but I knew it was him. That wedding ring still shone like the summer sun, but on a then-cold finger....


More Remembering -- Part Two

SILENCE! Total lightness.

Suddenly I saw nothing, smelled nothing and heard nothing.

Scientists speculate that hearing is the last sense to stay with a dying person, but not so for me. Maybe it's just as well so that I no longer heard the terrible cries of other people trapped in the ill-fated buildings. Everything just disappeared all at once, like a click on the computer. My life didn't even flash before my eyes.

Jessica, I felt terrible that I had no time for last thoughts about your lovely smile, the way you rubbed your round belly (with our baby inside) or even the sandwiches you always made for me to take to the fire station. I didn't even have time to pray. My God! What a shock to realize that I'd died and all my senses had vanished.

Probably my friends always considered me a cheerful and positive person. Well, it was partly true because I seldom thought of death, even though from my first day with the New York Fire Department, I should have realized that I might die on duty. Yet I felt absolutely unprepared for that to happen to me, especially so soon and when I focused with such expectation and excitement on our child's approaching birth.

Jessica, please don't cry for me on the anniversary of September 11 or any other day. Although I know you've moved on and regained that knock-down-every-single-guy smile, deep in your heart, part of you died with me. I know that many nights you wept with the pillow over your face so that your new husband, Jay, wouldn't hear. That knowledge hurts me so much.

One thing I'm sure about is that Jay is a great guy. He was a good teammate at the fire station. On the day you went there to empty my locker and passed out again, it was Jay who escorted you to the hospital and waited until you revived. He stayed awake for more than 24 hours, which almost cost his job for not reporting to duty on time.

For a while, I worried that you might have a miscarriage from the shock of my death. As the father of our baby, I couldn't do anything to help. I felt so useless – unable even to act as a “guardian angel” to my loved ones.

Another firefighter, a Chinese guy who died that day too, told me that his gravely ill mother once suddenly recovered after his wife had a miscarriage. Apparently, there's a Chinese myth that someone (often a fetus) must sacrifice if a family member falls sick or faces great danger. It's because they both struggle to live. Then I asked him if my baby would survive because I already had died. He said he didn’t know, that “only God knows”, and walked away.

Honestly, I owe Jay a lot for loving you and our son, Sean. He helped you through some of life's deepest valleys. He's such a good father to Sean. Our son has become a brilliant, well-behaved boy. I couldn't walk him to his first day of school or teach him to play baseball, but Jay did those things for me.

Besides that, thanks to Jay for taking home Bobby, my rescue-dog partner, once the old guy retired. Bobby's such a good dog. Sadly, I think he may have lung cancer from inhaling the toxic substances in the air after the World Trade Centre attacks. Sometimes he complains to me of difficulty breathing. Lately he's even losing appetite for his favorite meat – roast-chicken breast. You know, he and I still have a strong connection. Somehow he still sees and hears me. Maybe you've noticed how he sometimes barks at a closed door for no reason.

Jessica, please live happily for me and for your new family. Everyone has to move forward. Remember that we're lucky to have had the chance to love and nurture each other. Millions of innocent people, including those in Iraq and Afghanistan, suffer from terrorism and the resulting wars. Their houses burn and they die before the so-called blessings of democracy even arrive. Many of their surviving children may not learn to write or play sports simply because they lost limbs in the conflicts.

Sorry, my love, I really have to go now. True, I know we'll meet again, but I don't want it to happen too soon. I hope that you'll age beautifully and gracefully like other women do. I love you so much.

Honestly, I'm not sure if the place where I exist now is called heaven, but I think it's a lot like heaven because people respect each other, their ideas and religions. Probably heaven amounts to a state of mind.

Overall, I'm having a good time with hundreds of other firefighters, police officers and rescue workers. The people here include Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, atheists and others, all of us waiting for more of our loved ones to arrive.