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Two things -
I was in the ICU when I was 16. I was completely coherent at the time, hooked up to tons of machines, but coherent. A little boy next to me had been hit by a car while riding his bike. He died while I was there, and watching his family completely lose their shit was a genuinely life altering experience for me. Something deep inside me changed that day.
I also volunteered at a relief center on site at groud zero for several weekends in the two months following the attack. I was on the 8PM-8AM shift...my duties changed daily. Sometimes I was delivering hot chocolate and coffee to checkpoints, sometimes I was serving up food, making and cleaning beds. Often, though, I was sought out by firemen/nat guardsmen/police officers for chit chat...More often than not they just wanted to talk about normal things for a little while and not think about the things they were seeing. The first wee4kend, though, one fireman came in to the chapel and just sat down in one of the pews looking lost. On instinct I went and sat next to him and asked if there was anything I could do for him. He turned and put his head o my shoulder and started crying...sobbing. Gut wrenching sobs, and it was all I could do to keep my composure. I still have that soot stained sweatshirt, unwashed, along with a few other things that were given to me while I was down there.
I was in the ICU when I was 16. I was completely coherent at the time, hooked up to tons of machines, but coherent. A little boy next to me had been hit by a car while riding his bike. He died while I was there, and watching his family completely lose their shit was a genuinely life altering experience for me. Something deep inside me changed that day.
I also volunteered at a relief center on site at groud zero for several weekends in the two months following the attack. I was on the 8PM-8AM shift...my duties changed daily. Sometimes I was delivering hot chocolate and coffee to checkpoints, sometimes I was serving up food, making and cleaning beds. Often, though, I was sought out by firemen/nat guardsmen/police officers for chit chat...More often than not they just wanted to talk about normal things for a little while and not think about the things they were seeing. The first wee4kend, though, one fireman came in to the chapel and just sat down in one of the pews looking lost. On instinct I went and sat next to him and asked if there was anything I could do for him. He turned and put his head o my shoulder and started crying...sobbing. Gut wrenching sobs, and it was all I could do to keep my composure. I still have that soot stained sweatshirt, unwashed, along with a few other things that were given to me while I was down there.
