The 83rd Floor

I wrote this short piece after watching a documentary about phone calls from people trapped in the twin towers on 9/11. The victim's name has been changed out of respect to her family.

                       The 83rd Floor

Her name is Jane. It is 9.21am, just 4 minutes since the second hijacked plane impacted between the 77th and 85th floors of the south tower of the World Trade Centre which will collapse in fifty three minutes and take just eleven seconds to fall to earth. Jane along with her work mates, has been forced to lie on the floor, which is already beginning to cook, in a desperate bid to breath the air in her office being rapidly replaced by smoke.

 The heat is becoming unbearable, an oven with windows that won’t open. While on other floors of the towers, people with this mercy are flinging themselves to their deaths.
The 911 operator, who without doubt has one of the least envied job in the world, is calmly trying to reassure Jane that help is on the way. The operator knows what has happened. Everybody knows what has happened but she needs Jane to understand that it will take the firemen a little while to reach the floor she is on; the 83rd.

The elevators are largely unusable, gutted by burning aviation fuel. The only other route being the stairwell, miraculously undamaged, has become clogged with a slow moving procession of civilians and firemen. The firemen, each carrying a hundred pounds of equipment will take an hour to climb the stairwell to reach the upper floors as the metal supports will slowly warp and bend from the furnace which will eventually reach temperatures of 2000 degrees. The operator, just like anyone else on that day, has no way of knowing that the building will eventually collapse but if she has seen the pictures being broadcast then she must have a sense of the dire straits in which Jane finds herself and of her chances.
Jane says more than once that she is going to die and asks the operator for confirmation of this, maybe as if her honesty would give some minute grain of comfort; the comfort of empathy, but the operator cannot do this. Say your prayers, she is told instead. Whether the operator has ever spoken to the dying before is unknown but her calm, matter-of-fact, even possibly detached manner of speech perhaps can only lead to one conclusion.
Jane thinks she can hear some voices and begins screaming for help. For a few, brief seconds the hopes of both women are lifted but no reply ever comes. Jane asks the operator to find out whether anybody has reached the 83rd floor. The operator can be heard conferring with a third party-the firemen only managed to reach the 78th before the building collapsed- but she can only tell her that help is on its way. Then Jane asks the operator if she will stay with her and in a small, trembling voice announces that she is afraid to die. The operator will stay with Jane for the next twenty minutes as her words become fewer and further apart as she and her colleges are slowly over come by the smoke and the inevitability around them, each breath now a rare commodity, each second dutifully falling away into the final minutes. Eventually the line falls ominously silent and the operator is forced to conclude that she has lost her.

You are rushing from your home, keys jangle from your busy hands. Maybe you had time for a departing kiss as you left and a few brief words about that evening’s meal. You can’t be late, you need to get to where you are going. It’s all that matters right now as you emerge into the steadily rising warmth of the early morning sun. The air is still cool and feels keen against your skin, even raises a few goose bumps. By the time you hit the main throng, the sun is beating down on your shoulders and every exposed part of your flesh and you wonder to yourself how long it takes for skin to burn. Now as you move along with the other commuters you see this Tuesday morning as the latest to be pulled from the shelf, uniform but undeniable, to where it will, you believe, ultimately return, bookended by thirty two years of the past and the given future.
It seems you were in good time after all as you dab the sweat from your brow and pat your perfect hair into place. The heating rays of the sun are muted by the relative cool of the long shadow you now stand in. You crane your head upwards as always at the cement and glass that rises above. Glad to get out of the heat, you emerge from the revolving doors and into the sunlit, air conditioned lobby. You smile and exchange brief pleasantries with the receptionist as you do every morning before moving off through the warm bodies of the suits and uniforms as you make your way to the elevator. You break into a trot as the doors begin to close, then a friendly pair of hands holds them ajar as you gratefully squeeze inside the crowded but airy space. Everyone is reserved and calm and is either quietly minding their own business or chatting to their neighbour. The man who held the doors open for you asks which floor you want. He has a warm, if unremarkable face and something about him tells you he is a good man. It is 8.35 am and the good will you have received from this stranger has filled you with a welcome optimism. The 83rd floor you tell him with a smile as the doors finally close on you.