Free A Decade of Hope by Dennis Smith

treatments for people who had irritant injuries, and we actually even had a little surgical center in case somebody needed emergency treatment before we could get him to a hospital. We had no major injuries but were treating a lot of eye and nose irritation, giving them nebulizer treatments with albuterol, and a lot of walking wounded as well.
    And then, late in the afternoon, a chief came in and said we were in the shadow of tower 7, which could collapse right on top of us, and we had to move our triage area. I was a little upset about this, because we had really organized it very nicely, but we moved to Pace University, across the street from city hall, which turned out to be a better place for us, with a lot more room. When tower 7 fell the dust from the collapse came all the way up the stairs of Pace University, so we just missed the very periphery of that dust cloud. We stayed in our new location, again treating the same types of problems: no life-threatening injuries, just wounded people, eye irritation, and pulmonary irritation. I was helping a lot of people.
    I didn’t know until the next day that Chief Ganci was gone. I was too busy. I had no idea that 343 firefighters had died. I had no idea how many deaths there were. I had no idea that Father [Mychal] Judge [chaplain of the New York City Fire Department], with whom I was very friendly, had died. I had immense respect for him—immense. And I loved him. When I had been involved previously with some protective equipment research, he was really very helpful to me.
    I knew there must have been deaths in the collapse, but my feeling was very strong that my role was to work at and command the triage center. My expertise was not in packaging patients but rather in treating them. “Packaging” is not a negative term but an EMS term for immobilizing people and making [them] ready for transport. There were many people who were doing that, and I needed to be taking care of those people who walked or stumbled out and needed assistance. There were a lot of patients, and we were helping a lot of people, so I felt fulfilled. It was the right decision.
    We remained at Pace until about 9:00 P.M. One interesting event occurred then that shows we are all human and can all make serious mistakes. As we were leaving, exhausted, a young woman Rollerbladed up to the Pace center in hospital scrub and said, “I’m here to help.”
    I realized how much people wanted to help, and I presumed she was a nurse or physician. And she could have been helpful, but I had to disappoint her. I know it sounds strange to say “disappoint,” because it’s a good thing to not have patients, but I knew I was going to disappoint her. And so I said, “I’m sorry, but there are no patients anymore, and we’re closing up our shop, but you might want to go to a local emergency room to see if you can be of any help.”
    She replied, “No, you don’t get it. I’m a veterinarian.”
    Now she could see in my face complete surprise and a little disgust. I told her, in what I guess was a chauvinistic way, “Give me a break. We’ve been attacked; there have been hundreds of deaths.” I didn’t know then that there were actually thousands. This was not the time for a veterinarian to be here to rescue the parakeets and the kittens. We’re not going to risk lives to save some parakeets and some kittens.
    She now no longer presented the nice personality that she had had a moment before. Her facial expression changed, and she put me in my place, as she should have, and retorted something like, “Listen, buddy, I am a veterinarian, and one of the official veterinarians for rescue dogs in any New York City disaster. You either direct me to where the rescue dogs are or under federal regulation I am closing this site for all rescue dog activities.”
    And so there I was, now completely realizing that due to my own stupidity I could