I had Good Morning America on and was preparing to drive to work in DC from a few highway s tops to the Pentagon when the first plane hit the Towers. Then there was the second plane. My route to work was along the road by the side of the Pentagon that the plane came in on, but it hadn't hit yet. I called my brother, who was recovering from a broken hip on the eighth floor of a hospital in New Jersey, close to Manhattan, where we grew up, to ask him whether he could see anything and telling him that we were under attack.
Then the plane hit the Pentagon, with an enormous explosion that shook my bathroom, where I was brushing my teeth. My Godmother and aunt was a USAF lifer, a nurse, and she taught me the it was okay to cry, but one must take action. There was little that I could do. The highway to the Pentagon was frozen. I went to the store and brought cold drinks for those responding and drove to the nearest hospital. Someone confronted me and asked whether I could give blood. Of course. When I went into that room and did it (weird that I couldn't stop bleeding even though I had my arm raised in the air and was sitting at the table for my juice and cookie). When I left that room and headed for the ER (because I had some experience in the ER caring for my father and I can lift patients, get towels, etc.), the halls were lined with blood donors. Hundreds. I I just sat there waiting to assist in any capacity.
But, thinking later on, the hospital that I was in was not a burn center, and the patients from the Pentagon were being taken to local hospitals that had dedicated burn units staffed with experts.
This is just one little American's 9/11 story. There is nothing heroic about it. I'm just saying that I remember this day and I did whatever it was in my power to do.
