Free Reluctant Hero: A 9/11 Survivor Speaks Out About That Unthinkable Day, What He's Learned, How He's Struggled, and What No One Should Ever Forget by Michael Benfante

well. On these lower floors we saw more and more injured people. They were everywhere. Whoever had gotten this far had paid a visible price. Cuts and torn clothing. Heads wrapped in bandages. All around darkened hallways. Cracks in walls, water seeping through. It truly looked like a horror movie. But this was real.
    On the 10th floor, we were greeted by a tremendous rumbling sound. Powerful vibrations shook the floors under our feet and the railings under our hands, yet we could see nothing. John and I looked at each other wide-eyed, sharing the same thought without speaking it: What in God’s name was that ? We both looked down at the woman. She stared straight ahead. We looked back at each other and shook our heads as if to say, What next? I nodded to John, indicating, Let’s keep going . We knew something significant was happening because the entrance doors at the 10th-floor landing were different than the entrance doors at every previous landing. At every other floor, if you wanted to leave the stairwell and enter a floor, you had to pull the heavy entrance doors open toward you. But at the 10th-floor landing, a breeze came through with such force that the office doors blew open. The open doors blocked our three-person chain from getting through the landing to the next set of stairs. I had to hold the wheelchair in one hand and, with all my might, push the door closed with my other arm and hold it closed until we got completely clear of the landing. Once I let go, the door violently swung open again. Even without carrying a woman in a wheelchair, many people couldn’t handle the doors on the 10th floor.
    We didn’t know it, and we couldn’t see it, but that massive rumbling was the South Tower falling. All reports have this occurring at 9:59 a.m. John, the woman, and I had been inseparable for almost an hour.
    And then, on the 7th floor, things stopped. I gripped my side of the wheelchair tightly, perhaps for the first time feeling the burden of its weight. We stood there, anxious and still, at the top of the stairwell that connected the 7th floor to the 6th. I could see all the way to the bottom of the stairwell. No one was moving. Should we get off the stairs and find another way? I could no longer waste any time trying to figure out what the exact nature of the danger was. All my figuring had to be about getting us out of there. That was it. And the closer we got to getting out—the 7th floor was pretty close—the more I desperately wanted out. I knew at that moment that things were taking too long. We had to find a way out, fast. I knew whatever it was that was causing the holdup had to be bad, and that time was running out.
    I was not alone in feeling intense pressure to get out. The feeling among the halted train of people became less of common community and more like that of a caravan of disparate, disgruntled refugees. Faces darkened. Hopes dimmed. Kindness dissipated. A heavyset man moved slowly through the 6th-floor doorway, and some in the crowd let slip moans of impatience. Tension in the stairwell reached its breaking point. Fear began to manifest itself in different ways. Mine was a quiet fear. Others vocalized their desperation. The louder people got, the quieter I became. The more they panicked, the more I focused. Finally, the bubble burst. I stood there dead quiet in that dark stairwell, while everyone around me was yelling, “We’ve got to move! What’s holding it up! My god, we have to get out of here!”
    In his play No Exit , Jean-Paul Sartre famously penned the line “Hell is other people.” Where the hell was our exit?
The 5th Floor
    On the 5th floor we came to a dead stop. There was no movement at all. We had come to a crossroads. John, the woman, and I left the stairwell and went out onto the floor. We had to. It was a good decision if for no other reason than the fact that we were moving again. Some people chose to stay in the stairwell. Before we got to this point, all common sense