Miracle of the Shower Shoes...
Michelle Wiley, a fifty-two year old musician, awoke to a beautiful day on September 11. The sky was bright and clear as she played "Autumn Leaves," on the baby grand piano in her Gateway Plaza apartment, a block from the World Trade Center. All was well, that is, until she gazed out her window, and saw an airplane flying low...and heading directly toward the Twin Towers.
She knew immediately that the plane was going to hit, so she dialed 911 to report the incident, and before she finished her call, the plane had struck the building.
The phone went dead. And Michelle stood there numb in her nightgown and shower shoes as she watched flames and smoke engulf the top of the tower. She could see people jumping from the upper floors of the building, while others waved white towels in hopes that they'd be rescued.
Michelle didn't know whether she should leave her apartment or stay put.
She debated the issue for several minutes...then the South Tower collapsed, the ground started to vibrate, and the whole world suddenly went black. Michelle's apartment shook as if it were in the path of a tornado, and she fell to the floor.
She knew then that she had to get out of the apartment.
She crawled to the door and grabbed a leather jacket hanging beside it, which she quickly donned along with a pair of sneakers. She was in such a state of shock that she didn't realize she still clutched the pair of shower shoes as she exited the building.
In the hallway, she only paused long enough to help a neighbor down the stairs. Hand-in-hand, they descended a totally black stairway and made it to the apartment lobby where hundreds of other residents were stuck due to a jammed door. When the door was finally kicked open, everyone ran outside into a rain of white dust that was punctuated with office furniture, computers, paper, and hunks of sharp, twisted metal.
There was a terrible stench all around, and Michelle's skin itched from the thick white powder in the air. Still, she ran.
Many people were running in the direction of the subway, but there was a jumble of crushed cars and debris that way, and something told Michelle to go the other way.
She did just that. Running back through the crowd, she pulled her coat up to cover her nose and eventually made it to an area where injured firemen were being loaded onto a tugboat.
She got on the boat with several other civilians and tried to calm a hysterical woman who sat on her left. Then, she noticed the woman on her right was crying. Michelle looked down and saw that the woman's legs were badly cut, and she was barefoot. The woman had literally ran out of her shoes when the tower collapsed.
So Michelle handed her the shower shoes that she'd carried with her
all that time and said, "'You know something, I've been carrying these around. I guess they were for you.'"
"Miracle of the Shower Shoes," Written and designed by Bobette Bryan, 2002
|
