The Woman Who Wasn’t There (19 page)

“Last year I gave up on everything,” she wrote. “I was so tired of the memories, the flashbacks, the grief, that I gave up. But now I found a new therapist that I like, and we just started working together.”

Kedem was proposing a form of exposure therapy called flooding, Tania said. She would record her experience in the south tower on tape and listen to it every day. The goal was that she would eventually become desensitized to those debilitating memories.

She posted:

It’s going to be hard, but I’m excited to finally be able to tell someone what happened to me that day. I’ve been carrying these memories with me for so long that I literally cannot live with them. This is probably going to be as hard as being there that day, and all of my awful memories and all of the guilt is going to come out. I’m scared at the prospect, but I’m also excited, and this is all I can think about. I feel like I’m bracing myself for this battle, one of the most important of my life, and that’s all I have the energy for.

I don’t even know if I will be able to do this, but I want to give it a try. When I’m not missing Dave, I have flashbacks, or nightmares, or a friend’s baby reminds me of the life I lost. I can take it most of the time and pretend I’m OK, but other times, like this past week, it all becomes too much, and I need this so much because I don’t know how much longer I can hold it together.

Tania had a habit of cancelling plans at the last minute. The Williamses had made several trips to New York to spend anniversaries with Tania, and she had promised to visit Oklahoma City several times but never made it. Once, she had invited the Williamses to vacation with her at her beachfront house in Amagansett, and then cancelled when they already had their plane tickets in hand. She was always apologetic and usually had a very good excuse, and her friends were always quick to forgive because, after all, look at all she had been through. Lynne Williams, whose own life had been torn apart after Richard’s rescue from the rubble of the Murrah Federal Building, was even more understanding about the effects of trauma on survivors.

“My dear, dear friend,” she responded. “You have no idea how much I hope that this therapy will be of help to you. As much as I would love to see you and share some hugs (some of that Okielove!), I’m glad you’re not coming if it means you’re making progress. We could see that activity was your defense against the pain—you weren’t giving yourself time to feel it. Our simple lives didn’t afford us a
means of escape—mental or physical—after the bombing. That was the greatest blessing that we could ever have imagined. We met each memory, each obstacle, and each storm of dark emotion head on. It didn’t come in tidal waves threatening to drown us; it came in like the tide, sometimes reaching way too far, sometimes at a safe distance. But we faced it every day, and now it’s a tightly woven thread in the makeup of our lives. Richard and I have had each other to lean on. I don’t know how I would have coped if I’d lost him. Your loss is so great that you’ll never be the same person you once were. You still have so much love to give, and so much love being returned. Healing will follow. I will pray for your therapy, as I pray for you every day.”

The first session took place in Kedem’s office on Tuesday, May 1. With a tape recorder on the table beside her, Tania started at the beginning.
The subway ride to work with Dave that morning. The meeting in the conference room. People screaming. Counting down to Dave’s floor in the north tower. The trip down the stairs to the sky lobby with her colleagues. Waiting for the elevator with her assistant Christine
. She seemed to be having an out-of-body experience.
The violent crash. Windows breaking. Walls crashing. People flying through the air.
She was sobbing and rocking back and forth in her chair.
Hitting the marble wall. Waking up on fire. Christine is gone.
“Oh my God! Oh my God!”
Climbing over body parts.
“Help me! Somebody please help me!”

Tania’s memories were so raw and so real that Kedem’s colleagues knocked on his office door to make sure that everything was okay. The tape ran for forty-five minutes. When it was over, she slumped in her chair, dazed and confused about what had just taken place. Kedem gave her some water, and she sipped it slowly. Her homework was to take the tape home and listen to it every night as many times as she could handle it until they met again.

Tania stood to leave. Her hair was damp and stuck to her head, and black mascara ran down her cheeks. Placing his hand on her shoulder, Kedem warned her that things would get worse before they got better.

We were very pleased to learn that the committee is looking into the growing problem of nonresponders falling victim to 9/11-related illnesses, because there has been a disparity to date between the resources devoted to rescue and recovery workers, as compared with the health and financial resources available to other groups . . . We recently polled over 1,000 of our members and found that for the overwhelming majority, their number one concern today is health issues affecting survivors. And health issues affecting nonrescue survivors are not limited to physical problems alone. A large majority is still suffering from various degrees of trauma.

T
ania’s trip to Washington, DC, to testify before a congressional committee was a coup d’état, and a milestone for the network that no one could have imagined when a small group of people began meeting in a church hall to cobble together a support group in 2003. The hearing of the US Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions about the long-term health effects from September 11 was scheduled for the morning of March 21, 2007, in the Hart Senate Office Building on the Capitol Hill campus. The subcommittee was made up of a posse of political heavy hitters, chaired by Massachusetts senator Edward M. Kennedy, and including Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, Orin Hatch of Utah, and Barack Obama of Illinois. Mayor Bloomberg led the list of presenters. Tania
was to be the witness on behalf of survivors, and network board member Richard Zimbler helped her to prepare her statement.

“My name is Tania Head, and I am the president of the World Trade Center Survivors’ Network,” the speech began. “Our members are World Trade Center evacuees, workers from nearby buildings, Lower Manhattan residents, witnesses of the attacks, rescue and recovery workers, and volunteers.”

The nine-page speech was a pointed and eloquent summarization of the hardships suffered by the segment of the 9/11 community that had been overlooked, and the first such manifesto on the survivors’ behalf to drop into the laps of the US Congress.

Getting survivors funding for medical care was yet another of Tania’s projects, and she was excited to have the chance to lobby the senators and their staffs on behalf of her group. She had even arranged to fly back early from a business trip to Savannah, Georgia, to be able to deliver the speech herself rather than ask someone else on the board to fill in for her. “Ms. Head goes to Washington,” she joked to some of her friends.

Zimbler and the rest of the board had waited anxiously for Tania to return with a report. When no one had heard from her by that evening, Zimbler sent her an email.

“Hey, Tania. So how did it go today? I didn’t see your name on the witness list on the committee’s web page. Did you get a chance to network with Hillary or Obama’s aides?”

At 10:57 p.m., Tania responded. She had just gotten home from the airport, she said, and she hadn’t had a chance to report back before then because the day had been so full with meetings and networking and pushing the survivors’ agenda. She hadn’t gotten to testify, but her statement had been read into the record of the proceedings, she said. Reading her email, Zimbler could almost hear the excitement in her voice, and he was excited too:

I did meet a lot of people, including Dr. Reibman, who heads the program at Bellevue. She has agreed to come and speak at one of our meetings and would like us to help her prepare a report about
long-term care and serve on an advisory committee that will advise the committee that works with city hall.

I got a lot of business cards and did network with Hillary’s staff. I even reprimanded them because they still don’t use the word
survivors
right. Much of what was said again focused only on rescue and recovery workers. Residents were mentioned, and I guess we are now referred to as “workers.” Survivors of Sept. 11 are such second-class citizens that no one even mentions us.

Someone from Hillary’s office suggested that we put out a press release this week thanking Sen. Clinton for her efforts and using the same text in our testimony to continue to draw attention to nonrescue survivors. I think this is a great idea, what do you think?

Mike B [Bloomberg] didn’t mention survivors once, he just made an appeal to open up the 9/11 fund again so that rescue and recovery workers who are getting sick can be eligible to receive comp. Mostly so that the city is not stuck with the bill. Dr. Reibman was the only one who really spent a few minutes talking about nonrescue workers, explaining how many office workers/ residents are getting sick and how many more continue to show up. She said that unless they receive additional funding, at the rate they are getting new sign-ups, the program will run out of funding at the end of 2008. It’s pretty depressing.

. . . I’m glad I went through it; it’s a striking reality check. We need to do more to call attention to nonrescuers getting sick . . . Plus, it is really fascinating to see the wheels of government in motion. Hillary has a very commanding presence, and you can tell this is her thing. You know what, politics apart, when you see her in action, you can picture her as president.

. . . I brought a lot of copies of our document and handed over all the copies to everyone I talked to, including the media, so that’s that. Sen. Clinton is interested in meeting with us, and apparently they thought the idea of inviting the committee to attend hearings in NY/NJ was brilliant. You would think they would think of these things.

Well, that’s it for now.

Zimbler was proud of Tania. He had never seen anyone who worked so hard and was so committed. Just when he thought the Survivors’ Network had reached its pinnacle, Tania moved it higher. With her as their leader, there was nothing they couldn’t accomplish.

L
inda stepped out of the taxi at West Fifty-Fifth Street and Tenth Avenue and looked skyward toward Tania’s apartment. The living room lights were blazing in her friend’s unit on the eighteenth floor of the luxury high-rise. Tania was waiting. “Shit.” For three years, Linda had come to the now trendy Hell’s Kitchen section of the city at least once a week before heading across the river to her home in Hoboken, New Jersey. That was their time just to be girlfriends, away from the stresses of the network. Most times, she and Tania would order in and spend the rest of the evening talking or watching movies. Linda always looked forward to the visits. But tonight she wanted to be anywhere but here.

Entering the building, she nodded at the doorman and walked through the modern lobby to the bank of elevators at the other end, her high heels clicking on the marble floor. She pushed the up button and waited. Her stomach was uneasy. No, that didn’t begin to describe the way she felt. She was trying to fight back waves of nervous nausea. Why had she agreed to do this, damn it? Why was she always doing things she didn’t want to do? Maybe she could fake the flu, or say that her mother needed her, or her dog was sick. Maybe she should just tell the truth: that she was scared to death of what was about to happen. The elevator doors slid open, and she stepped inside and pushed the button for Tania’s floor. How easy would it be to just walk out of the elevator and go home? It really wasn’t an option, though, not if she wanted to stay in Tania’s good graces. Despite her furtive and hapless little wish that it wouldn’t, the elevator glided upward.

Tania lived in apartment number 1803, a few doors down from
Andrew Stein, the former city council president. Every time Linda came here, she couldn’t help but wonder what life would be like if money wasn’t an issue. White-glove services, sweeping city views, and rents that had to start at $4,000 a month—she could imagine living in such luxury. The elevator stopped at eighteen, and Linda turned and walked haltingly down the sterile hallway toward Tania’s apartment. Even before she could ring the buzzer, the door flew open. Tania stood in the doorway, smiling that Cheshire cat grin of hers. She looked good. Her hair was pushed off her face, and her dark jeans and short-sleeved shirt were crisply pressed, as always. Her brown eyes shone with excitement behind her dark-rimmed glasses.

“Hey, Blondie!” she said, motioning for Linda to come inside. “Are you ready?”

“Hardly,” Linda thought to herself. For days, Linda had been listening to Tania talk about her new therapist and an intense form of treatment she was undergoing. It was all she had talked about lately, this flooding stuff. She had told Linda about the tape she’d made with Kedem and about her homework to listen to the recordings at home. She had tried a few times, she said, but it was too scary. The therapist suggested that she recruit someone she trusted to be with her during the exercise, and she had chosen—who else?—her very best friend.

Linda had put off this moment for as long as she could, and then she ran out of excuses. Fear hammered her now. She felt shaky. Nervously jingling the change in her pocket from the cab ride over, she hesitated in the doorway. She had been sober now for almost four years, and her resolve not to drink was strong, but as they said in Alcoholics Anonymous, “If you don’t want to slip, don’t go into slippery places.” The floor beneath her felt slick. She tried stalling.

“Listen, Tania,” she said, still jingling the coins, “I have an idea. Why don’t we do this another night? I’m really not feeling up to this. Let’s go out and grab some dinner at the restaurant down the street that you like so much. You can tell me all about your trip to Washington. What do you say? C’mon. I’ll even treat this time.”