My colleague burst through the door of my operating room.
“A
plane! A plane just crashed into the World Trade Center.”
I looked up from where I was standing next to the operating table. My resident
and I were removing a malignant mass from my patient’s neck. The surgery had just started but the
scars from another surgeon’s biopsy made the initial steps of the dissection
tricky.
“What?”
“A plane. I was in the OR lounge and the news switched to New York. A plane
just crashed into the World Trade Center.”
I stared at him. I re-checked the surgical field and put pressure on the wound.
“So, what are they saying? What’s going on?”
“They don’t know. My God. It’s awful.”
He left and we went back to work. The resident and I teased out the anatomy,
peeling the skin from the underlying muscles, finding the jugular vein and
preserving the nerves to the tongue and the shoulder. We dissected the lymph
nodes away from the surrounding tissues deep in the wound.
The door opened. “Another plane. This one crashed into the other tower.”
“What?”
“They’re replaying the videos over-and-over. The first tower is on fire. Then
there’s the other plane.”
He ran out again.
We lifted out some of the nodes, clearing them from the carotid artery. By
placing my fingers lightly on the carotid, I could feel the patient’s blood
flowing from his heart to his brain.
The door opened. “Bush was just on TV. He says it’s terrorists.”
I closed my eyes. “Please stop. Please don’t come in with any more news
reports.”
He paused. “Okay, sure.” Then he left.
We wrapped up the surgery, tying off a few small blood vessels and closing the
wound. It was deadly quiet. None of us in the room had any idea what was going
on, but we sensed it was bad. I lingered as the patient woke up. We wheeled him
to the recovery room.
Someone stopped me in the hallway. “The first tower collapsed.”
I went to the lounge to watch with the others, then walked down to the family
center to talk to my patient’s wife. She was watching the news along with
everyone else. We stepped into a private consultation room so I could review
her husband’s surgery. We returned to the waiting area where I stared at the
television with her for a few minutes. The scenes of smoke billowing from the
towers and the slow-motion impact of the second plane were playing
over-and-over.
Everyone in the hospital looked dazed. News reports flashed about a plane
crashing into the Pentagon. Another plane had reportedly crashed in
Pennsylvania.
I
wondered: Were any of my New York friends killed? Would New York and
Washington, DC hospitals be overwhelmed? Many of my partners were at a meeting
in Denver. Were they okay? The airports are closed. How will they get home?
Were more attacks imminent? Were we all in danger?
I walked back to the recovery room where my patient was waking up. I told him
that the surgery had gone well. He smiled and dozed off. He had gone to sleep
in one world and awakened in another.
Despite humankind’s overwhelming capacity for kindness and compassion, we also
seem bent on senseless, self-inflicted tragedy. The numbers of people killed during
wars and atrocities are incomprehensible. 450,000 died in the American Civil
War. Approximately 85,000,000 died over the course of WWII, including the
single-day death tolls of 1,177 at Pearl Harbor, 145,000 in Dresden, and 60,000
at Hiroshima. Millions have died in wars about which we never studied in
school. The death tolls from slavery, racism, and brutality cannot be
measured.
Survivors beg us to remember the stories, but their voices soon fade.
Nineteenth Century Americans were exhorted to, “Remember the Alamo!”
and reminded to “Remember the Maine!”
as the country waged wars with Mexico and Spain. The survivors of those
cataclysmic events - and many others - are long gone. Their appeals fail to
stir us. After each moment of outrage, our collective and personal sense of
innocence and the illusion of normalcy returns. Our hands return to our daily
tasks. We turn away and forget.
Still, I was shaken hard that morning. I will never understand why 3000 people
were killed that day in New York, at the Pentagon, and in a farm field in
Shanksville, Pennsylvania. I mourn the hundreds of first responders and
clean-up workers who were sickened or died. I despair at the subsequent
thousands of dead civilians and soldiers and the millions of refugees. The
gnawing emptiness in my gut during the weeks that followed mirrored the
emptiness of the skies devoid of planes. Yet, the aftershocks faded. Soon,
even when I tried, I could no longer evoke the depths of despair that were once
so real.
For several years, the patient on whom I operated the morning the towers fell continued to come for follow-up visits. I was happy to see him. I would examine his neck and make certain his cancer had been controlled. We always spent part of the appointment reliving our shared, indelible experience.
“Do you remember?” we would ask each other.
“Yes, I do,” we would respond.
Eventually, though, there was no need for him to return. No more annual visits. “Let me know if things change,” I said.
He shook my hand. “I won’t forget that day,” he said.
“Me, either,” I replied. Yet, I know now, I had already begun the process of forgetting.
The fading passion, I am certain, protects us from being locked into permanent states of grief and anger. 9/11 – as well as all the shocking events that have rocked our recent national history – arouse outrage and grief. They evoke powerful emotions and calls to action. New leaders rise and inspire us to be part of the change. The events and names remain alive if we amplify the stories. We pledge to stay engaged.
Although nineteen years have passed, 9/11 remains one of my communal “Where were you?” moments. Most of the medical students with whom I work were in grade school the day that the attacks occurred. The act of telling this story again is my way of keeping a memory of that day – and the passions it engendered in me – alive.
Bruce H Campbell, MD FACS is a Professor in the MCW Department of Otolaryngology and Communication Sciences and in the MCW Institute for Health and Equity (Bioethics and Medical Humanities). He is on the Faculty Pillar of The Robert D. and Patricia E. Kern Institute for the Transformation of Medical Education. He serves as the editor of the Transformational Times. A previous version of this essay appeared several years ago in Dr. Campbell’s blog, “Reflections in a Head Mirror.”
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