I will tell this story to the best of my recollection.
SB's friend K is a remarkable man. Years ago he quit his finance job and spent years traveling around the world, engaging in all sorts of exciting activities. He kayaked from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. He rode his bicycle across the United States. While in India he grew a beard so that he could enter Yemen with minimum attention.
Ten years ago during he worked in a finance company on Church Street in New York City. One morning he was having a meeting in the center of his office when a huge explosion rocked the building. Nothing was spoken after that; the meeting broke up as each colleague ran for an exit. Interestingly, each of the four colleagues at the meeting chose a different emergency exit. Three of them made it out of the building in minutes but K had chosen the wrong exit.
He ended up in a mass of confusion as people were running in both directions. The exit floor had become blocked with debris and smoke so eventually he made his way onto a refuge floor with several colleagues. After about half an hour later he went back to the staircase and discovered that some of the smoke had cleared and firefighters were ascending the stairs. Some of the people on the refuge floor opted to wait but he decided to go down the staircase. The fire at the bottom was not as bad as it had seemed.
Once outside he began walking from the building with a couple of women who had exited with him. He had lost his colleagues. As they walked away a loud noise drew his attention. He looked back to see a sight that most of the world has now also seen. He told the women with him not to turn around but they did. One woman fell to the ground. Eventually they did the only thing left to do and began walking again. He lived close to his office so he took the women to his home where they stayed for some amount of time before going on. I didn't ask if he found out their names or ever saw them again.
Most of us know where we were at that time. I spent that morning in the stairwell of my school, offering comfort to a stranger. We have forged a friendship out of the day that we were united by our grief and fear though we have never spoken about it. But I am writing it down now as a record or what was lost and gained.
SB's friend K is a remarkable man. Years ago he quit his finance job and spent years traveling around the world, engaging in all sorts of exciting activities. He kayaked from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. He rode his bicycle across the United States. While in India he grew a beard so that he could enter Yemen with minimum attention.
Ten years ago during he worked in a finance company on Church Street in New York City. One morning he was having a meeting in the center of his office when a huge explosion rocked the building. Nothing was spoken after that; the meeting broke up as each colleague ran for an exit. Interestingly, each of the four colleagues at the meeting chose a different emergency exit. Three of them made it out of the building in minutes but K had chosen the wrong exit.
He ended up in a mass of confusion as people were running in both directions. The exit floor had become blocked with debris and smoke so eventually he made his way onto a refuge floor with several colleagues. After about half an hour later he went back to the staircase and discovered that some of the smoke had cleared and firefighters were ascending the stairs. Some of the people on the refuge floor opted to wait but he decided to go down the staircase. The fire at the bottom was not as bad as it had seemed.
Once outside he began walking from the building with a couple of women who had exited with him. He had lost his colleagues. As they walked away a loud noise drew his attention. He looked back to see a sight that most of the world has now also seen. He told the women with him not to turn around but they did. One woman fell to the ground. Eventually they did the only thing left to do and began walking again. He lived close to his office so he took the women to his home where they stayed for some amount of time before going on. I didn't ask if he found out their names or ever saw them again.
Most of us know where we were at that time. I spent that morning in the stairwell of my school, offering comfort to a stranger. We have forged a friendship out of the day that we were united by our grief and fear though we have never spoken about it. But I am writing it down now as a record or what was lost and gained.
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