| Nor will I. At the time of the attacks, I was working as a paramedic in Atlanta. My roommate woke me up a few minutes before the second plane struck. I was groggy from the night shift before and very, very confused when the second one crashed. I was initially asking if they were showing a replay. All too soon I realized the tragedy of what had just unfolded and the probable loss of life and those that I considered brothers and sisters that was about to take place. I went into work at 2 PM and we were flooded with panic attacks from our very delicate psych patient population. Hell, we were all struggling with the same concerns and losses. It was very, very difficult to maintain compassion with that particular population that day, but we managed. After about 5 or 6 of those calls, we were dispatched on an 86 year old lady that had fallen down her front porch steps. When we got there, there was a small, frail Hispanic lady lying in her front yard apologizing for being so much trouble in her very broken and difficult to understand English. We packaged her, gave her some medicine for the pain, and I drove in while my partner attended to her in the box. Her daughter rode in with me and her English was even more broken than her mother's. We were pulling onto Peachtree RD when her daughter looked over at me with tears rolling down her face. She said, "I am so apology and hurt for what your country hurts today." I lost it. I had to pull over and cry like a baby for a couple of minutes. She was still concerned for her mother, but it was almost like she could sense the difficulty of whet we were going through as emergency responders that day. She honestly seemed upset that she needed our help. That two minute exchange is how I will always remember that day. It was a family member of a patient that took care of me that day. She probably had no idea that her exact words were what I needed to hear that day to make me OK. To me its a bit more than Never Forget. I look at it as Always Remember. Nice capture that will surely always bring up the entire range of emotions in my little head. |
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