Free Who I Am With You by Missy Fleming Page A

this. Catherine deserved to finally hear everything. “After the first plane, I tried Mom on her cell and, after a couple tries, connected. A minor, blessed miracle. They were okay, had no power or working elevators, and were still on the 91 st floor. They headed down with everyone else after a lot of indecision, but their progress was very slow. At one point, they were even told to wait, that there was no danger to their building, their evacuation would come as soon as the situation on the ground was safe. Can you believe it?”
    “You talked to them?” Disbelief caused Catherine’s voice to wobble.
    “Just Mom. Dad was busy.”
    “Doing what?”
    “I heard him in the background, encouraging people not to give up. Mom said they were stopping at each floor, checking for stragglers. Dad wouldn’t leave anyone behind.” Olivia paused, wiped at her damp cheeks and avoided eye contact with Catherine.
    “And then?”
    “They were gone. I lost connection when the second plane crashed. I’ve thought about it a million times and they must have been there, in the stairwells, in the area the plane hit. I mean, at least then they wouldn’t have suffered.”
    She glanced at Catherine, her body was immobile and tears ran down her face. It was the first time she had ever witnessed her grandmother cry, not even at her grandfather’s funeral, and Olivia shifted uncomfortably in her seat. The act, while completely natural, disturbed her. This woman had always been a rock.
    “Countless families never learned what happened to their loved ones, didn’t know where they were, the circumstances. I assumed I was one of them. I had no idea how my son died. It didn’t occur to me that you were right in the middle of this catastrophe and I was terrible to you when you’d been through hell.” Catherine’s lips quivered.
    “No one acted reasonably during that time. I wasn’t exactly warm to you, either.”
    “Why did it take you so long to come home? I was frantic.”
    “For some reason, I couldn’t leave.” Olivia fussed with the hem of her skirt, swallowing multiple times to dislodge the taste of ash and concrete appearing from nowhere, the guilt for not letting anyone know she was alive. “There was this desperate part of me that assumed once they started pulling people from the rubble they’d find Mom and Dad, that they were in an air pocket and survived, trapped like I’d been. The police chased me off more than once, but I found ways to stick around. Eventually, I helped hand out water, awkwardly I might add with the cast. I think I slept in a door stoop one night. Most of it’s a blur.”
    “My poor Olivia. No wonder you have suffered so much.”
    Catherine’s quiet statement pierced her to the core, but she was too mired in the past to acknowledge it. Releasing a shuddering sigh, Olivia’s vision filled with the memory of twisted metal and smoke.
    “One thing I do remember, and I’ll always remember, is approaching one side of the burning ruin that first afternoon, after the paramedics patched me up. There was this chirping. Constant. Coming right from the pile. I asked a police officer nearby what it was and he told me it was the PASS units for the firefighters, Personal Alert Safety System, or something similar.”
    Seeing the confusion on her grandmother’s face, Olivia explained, “When a firefighter goes into a fire they have a device attached to their jacket. If one goes down, passes out from smoke inhalation or is in distress, this thing senses the lack of movement and sends a signal, a beeping sound.” She shivered. “Hundreds of these devices were going off from inside the rubble, beneath tons of burning debris. So loud and eerie. Occasionally, I still hear it.”
    “Chilling,” the older woman murmured. “I doubt anyone was the same after witnessing such horrors, civilian and firefighter alike.”
    “I know I’m not the only one who carries the weight of 9/11 with me, which helps. This fireman,