United We Stand - Couverture souple

CHAPTER ONE

My eyes opened ever so slightly. The bed felt warm and soft, and all I wanted to do was sleep some more. But there was light coming through the window and I thought I really should get up . . . probably. I sat up and stretched and looked down at my hands. They were both cut, and there was a line of stitches extending from the palm of my left hand almost up to the wrist. My hand was throbbing. Then it all came back to me.

It was like some sort of bizarre dream–no, a nightmare–but I knew it was all real. There was the evidence, right there on my hands–the cuts, the gash that I got crawling through the debris and the dust storm and then scrambling away, unable to see or breathe, on all fours. I remembered thinking that I’d survived the plane crashing into the building, the explosion, the fire, the mad rush down the stairs, and the collapse of the building, only to die, suffocating, in the dust and debris.

I started to cough like I was still somewhere in that cloud of dust. There was something stuck in my throat. I continued to cough until I spat it out into my hand–thick, black phlegm. God knows what it was, but I figured almost anything could have been lining my throat and lungs. I wiped it on the side of the bedspread.

“Will!”

It was my mother. She was standing in my bedroom doorway. She looked so upset–she must have seen me wiping the gunk on the bedspread.

She burst into tears, rushed over, and threw her arms around me.

“I’m just . . . just so glad . . . you’re okay,” she sobbed.

“I’m fine . . . I’m good.”

“Let me look at you.”

She released her grip and leaned back so she could look me square in the eyes. She started crying again.

“I’m fine, honestly. You don’t have to cry.”

“Honey, these are tears of joy. I’m just so glad you’re all right. And your hand. How is your hand?”

She held up my left hand and looked at the stitches. Even I had to admit that it did look nasty, like I’d been in a knife fight–and lost.

“It must hurt terribly,” she said.

“Not really. It feels almost numb. It looks a lot worse than it is,” I said. “Speaking of which . . . you look awful.”

She laughed. I hadn’t expected that.

“I haven’t slept,” she said. “The two of you were coughing so badly all night.”

“We were? I didn’t notice . . . I thought I slept right through.”

“You did. But it kept me awake. I had to be awake anyway, though, to check on your father because of his concussion.”

“Dad . . . is he okay?”

“He’s saying that he’s fine. Not that I know if I should believe him.”

“I want to see him,” I said as I yanked off the blankets and swung my feet to the floor. “Where is he?”

“He’s in the den.”

I climbed out of bed and stumbled slightly, my legs giving way under me. My mother reached out and took me by the arm to steady me. My legs were sore all over, particularly painful in a couple of spots, and I remembered then that my knees and legs were just as cut up and bruised as my hands.

“Let me help you,” my mother offered.

I didn’t argue. I felt like I needed her help. “I want to see Dad.”

She led me out of the bedroom, through the kitchen, and toward the den. The door was slightly ajar and I could hear him–he was talking to somebody. Gently I knocked on the door and pushed it open wider. He was standing by the window. He was alone, talking on the phone.

His face was all cut and bruised, and I was shocked at how swollen one side was. It hadn’t been that swollen last night. His left arm was in a sling, and I knew underneath his shirt were three fractured ribs. If he was coughing all night he would have been in a lot of pain.

He saw us, gave a little smile that was distorted by the swelling, and motioned for us to come in. He continued his conversation.

“I know there will be some complications involved in transferring that amount of money,” he said.

Unbelievable. Yesterday we’d both almost died and here he was doing business, like nothing had happened. I’d had some fleeting fantasy that somehow this would change his compulsion for working so hard, but I guess I was wrong. Business was business, and that would never–

“Hold on a second,” he said into the phone.

He put the phone down on the desk and walked over and wrapped his arms around me, giving me a gigantic hug. Maybe something had changed. I hugged him back and he groaned–I’d forgotten about his ribs.

“Sorry.”

“No need to apologize,” he said. “Just good to have your arms around me.”

I felt the same way.

He loosened his grip so he could look at me. “How you doing, kid?”

“I’m good.”

“You don’t seem so good.”

“Look who’s talking,” I said.

He chuckled. “I guess you’re right, but really, are you okay?”

“As okay as I can be. You?”

“I am now.” He let go of me. “Sit down, this will just take a minute . . . It’s important.”

He picked up the phone again. “Listen, Suzie, I just want–”

“Suzie is okay!” I exclaimed.

My father smiled and nodded.

I hadn’t even thought about her, or any of the other people in the office. Most of them would have gotten out, I thought, but not all of them . . . Some of those people would have died . . . So many people had died.

“You call Cam Peters back and you tell him I want one hundred thousand dollars deposited directly into an account I can use at my discretion. Tell him that is a direct order from me, and if he doesn’t do it immediately I’ll be paying him a visit myself, and I’m not half as pretty or polite as you.”

She said something I couldn’t hear and he laughed.

“Good. Good. So, I’ll see you here right after lunch.” Hearing this phone call about money and knowing my father the way I did, I had a good idea what was happening. He was going to start working, today, from here. He didn’t have an office–he didn’t even have a building–but it was going to take more than the collapse of the World Trade Center to stop him from doing business.

“And, Suzie, thanks for everything. I’m just so glad you’re . . . you’re . . . you got out. You know I love you.”

What was he saying? She was his assistant, his very young assistant, and he was saying all this right in front of–

“Suzie, you’re like family to me, like a daughter,” he said. “Now, are you sure you’re okay to come here today? If you don’t feel up to it I’ll understand . . . Okay, at least promise me that you’ll drive carefully.”

He put the phone down and turned to us. “Suzie is going to help me. I have to try to contact everybody, all the people in the office. I have to know if everybody . . . if everybody is okay.”

“They should be fine,” I said. “They all left before we did, and we got out.”

I’d been with my father–it was sort of like “take your kid to work” day at my school– in his office on the eighty-fifth floor, South Tower, of the World Trade Center. I’d been there when the first plane hit the North Tower. And my father wasn’t just the boss in his own office; he was the fire warden for the floor. Right away he’d ordered everybody in his office–all one hundred people–to stop whatever they were doing and evacuate the building. He’d given that order before the second plane hit our tower.

“I know they all left before us,” he said. “But what if some of them heard the P.A. announcement and decided to go back?”

Just after my father had chased everybody out of the office, and before that second plane hit our building, there had been an announcement over the P.A. saying that there was no danger, that people shouldn’t evacuate the South Tower, and that they should go back to their offices.

“They wouldn’t have done that . . . They wouldn’t have gone back . . . would they?”

He shook his head. “I have no way of knowing for sure,” he said, “but some of our traders get so focused on the deal that they’ll look for any excuse to get back to the office and start working again.”

I started to snicker.

“I know, I know, but I’m hoping to slow down myself.”

“Like today?” I asked.

“No choice today, but from now on there’ll be shorter hours, fewer evenings. You’ll see.”

“We’d like that, dear,” my mother said. “But seeing is believing.”

“Sometimes it’s the other way around. Believing is seeing.”

I sort of got what he was saying. We never would have got out of that building if we hadn’t believed. I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

“I think they were all out,” I said. “We were for sure the last ones in your office after the plane hit the building. Nobody else was there then, and I can’t imagine anybody coming back up after the plane hit.”

“I’m just afraid for anyone who might have been trying to come back,” he said. “Maybe someone was heading up the stairs and ended up on the one of the floors where the plane hit.”

I hadn’t thought about that. The floors a few below ours– seventy- nine and eighty and eighty- one–had been devastated. Anybody on those floors would have been killed instantly.

“And,” my father continued, “the announcement said people could take the elevators. What if people listened to that?”

I’d seen what had happened to some of the elevators. The metal doors had been blown right off and the walls directly across scorched by flames. I’d also heard about elevators that had just plunged down the shafts, killing everybody.

“Suzie’s coming over to help me find a new office and locate all our people. Together we’re going to try to talk to everybody,” my father said. “The only problem is that when we lost the office we also lost all the home addresses and phone numbers for everybody in the company, worldwide.”

“You don’t have a backup?” my mother questioned.

“All financial dealings were backed up in our other offices, but the personnel information for all our branches around the world was kept in our office.” He shook his head slowly, his expression sad. “They thought that ours was the most secure site.”

“So, how are you going to do it?” my mother asked. “How are you going to get in touch with everybody?”

“Suzie socializes with a couple of the women from the office, so she has their numbers. Bill Saunders is a member of my fitness club. We know where some people live and we’ll go through phone books. We’re hoping that every person we reach will have contacts that will help us reach somebody else.”

“That makes sense,” I said. “But why do you need the money . . . ? You know, the money you asked to be transferred to you?”

“The money is to secure a lease, rent some office equipment, put in phones and computers. We have to get the business up and running.”

“But right away? Today?”

“I have an obligation to the people in my office to get them back to work as soon as possible. Most people are only one paycheck away from defaulting on their mortgages, from going into bankruptcy. With no money coming in this week, there are people who might be desperate. This way, I’ll have enough to give advances, or maybe even loans. With what they’ve all gone through, the last thing our employees should have to worry about now is money.” He paused. “They might also need the money for other things.”

I gave him a questioning look. “Like what?”

He didn’t answer right away. “I was thinking about medical costs, maybe even funeral expenses. We can only hope that’s not the case.”

We could hope. I just didn’t know if that hope was realistic. Tens of thousands of people had been injured, and thousands killed. Some of them could have been from my father’s office.

“They might also need to see counselors,” my mother added.

“Counselors for what?” I asked.

“People who have gone through tragedy, through difficult or dangerous situations, can suffer from the after-effects,” she said.

“I don’t understand,” I told her. “If you survived, you survived.”

“It’s called post-traumatic stress disorder,” she explained. “I learned about it when I was training as a social worker, and they were talking about it on CNN this morning. They said this is going to affect not just the people who were in the towers and their families, but people everywhere across the country, even around the world.”

“Now I’m really confused. People who weren’t even there are going to suffer from this post-traumatic whatever stress thing?”

“Stress disorder. People will have anxiety attacks, will become depressed, have sleep problems . . . I certainly couldn’t sleep last night,” my mother said.

“Yeah, but you had a reason. You were watching Dad because of the concussion. Besides, you’d spent the day thinking that we were dead–we were there.”

“Your mother is right,” my father said. “This is going to have an effect on people everywhere. And more than that, it’s going to change everything.”

Maybe my thinking was still a bit fuzzy, but I wasn’t getting it.

“This is something that’s going to be a turning point in history,” my father went on. “Everybody will remember where they were and what they were doing at the moment they heard about the attack.”

“I know where I was,” I said. “I was right there.”

“Yes, but everybody who watched it on television will feel like they were there too. And what happened will have an impact that we can’t even imagine yet,” my father said.

“This country has been changed,” my mother said. “We don’t know what those changes are going to be yet, but nothing will be the same.”

“Wait . . . I know that man,” my father said. He was pointing to a television in the corner of the room. With the sound turned down I hadn’t even noticed it was on, but I recognized the man on the screen.

A CNN reporter was interviewing a man from the engineering firm just down the hall, on the same floor as my father’s office. I didn’t even know his name, but I was amazed at how happy I was to see that he was alive. I looked around desperately for the remote, but it was nowhere to be seen, so I rushed over to the set and turned the sound up manually.

“Can you describe the trip down the stairs?” the female reporter asked him.

“At first it was sort of like a fire drill at school. Everybody was just joking around . . . It was light, you know, playful,” he said. “You have to remember, at that point, we didn’t know much about what had happened in the other building–all we knew was that it had been hit by a plane. And our building hadn’t been hit yet.”

“And after the second plane did hit your building?”

“To tell you the truth, at first we still didn’t know exactly what had happened,” he said. “Not really. But we hadn’t made it very far down the stairs, and we knew we were probably only three or four floors below the point of impact by then. We felt it. A couple of people were knocked over, and then we felt the whole building shake, and the lights went out and the sprinklers came on and some of the panels fell off the wall. It wasn’t a school fire drill any more.”

“And you are an engineer,” the reporter said.

“Yes, a structural engineer. My firm designs buildings, bridges, parking structures. We know about how to put a building up,” he said.

“Or what it might take to bring one down,” the reporter said.

“That too. When the building reacted to the impact and started to really sway, I had a pretty good idea that something major had happened. And then when I smelled the fuel it was pretty clear that it was another plane.”

“That must have been terrifying.”

“That’s the strangest part. It wasn’t terrifying because it was just so . . . so . . . un...

Dramatic, gripping, and moving, this sequel to the award-winning We All Fall Down will captivate readers.

It’s September 12th, 2001, and New York City is at a standstill: somber, bleak and shocked in the aftermath of the World Trade Center attacks. Will knows he and his father are lucky to have escaped; others, like his best friend James’ father are still missing . . . and soon presumed to be dead.

Poignant and dramatic, United We Stand is a young adult novel about heartache, self-discovery, and the power of friendship.