Thunder Dog (15 page)

“Karen.” My heart jumps. “It’s me, Mike.” Then he says the two best words I’ve ever heard. “I’m okay.”

I give in to tears. There are days Mike drives me crazy, but there are other days I know we were meant for each other. I know what it’s like to live with a limitation. My legs have been paralyzed since birth. Right before she gave birth to me, my mother became very ill with a kidney infection. I was released from the hospital before Mom was, and I think we almost lost her. Doctors weren’t sure whether the damage to my spinal cord came from the kidney infection or if it was related to my breech birth. Neither Mike’s parents nor my parents were of the litigation era, and although they might have had cause, back then you just didn’t sue doctors or hospitals.

I was the oldest child, and my parents had another girl and a boy after me. My dad wanted to be a doctor, but the war interrupted his plans. He served as an army medic then came back and went into psychology and teaching. During the war, Mom and her sisters drove school buses. They not only drove the buses but also brought them home each night and serviced them themselves.

I did well in school and got placed in the gifted group. I went to college at UC Riverside and wanted to become a school librarian. I had been working at the high school library since ninth grade.

I also attended Council for Exceptional Children conventions with my father and got to spend time with gifted researchers. They challenged my goal of working as a school librarian, and I remember them saying over a glass of wine, “Do you want to work with people? Or things?” People, of course. When I researched graduate schools, there were three major schools of library science on the West Coast: UC Berkeley, USC, and the University of Hawaii. But all three were physically challenging for someone in a wheelchair.

I chose USC, but not for the School of Library Science. Instead I was honored with a doctoral scholarship in the School of Education, and I earned a master’s degree in the area of mental retardation. I did my student teaching my senior year but again ran into very limited opportunities due to lack of accessibility for someone in a wheelchair. I graduated from USC and started my teaching career in a junior high school with students diagnosed with educational handicaps. Two years later, I got the chance to be a team leader in a new program at a brand-new elementary school in Irvine, California. At the time, the state of California was master-planning education and pushing the inclusion of all students with special needs in classrooms. All children were mainstreamed, and the services were brought to the children rather than children being pulled out of classrooms for special programs. Many teachers were resistant to the new philosophy, but I found it fun and challenging. My room had a mini kitchen, so many of the young teachers ended up in my room, where we shared soothing cups of tea and brainstormed ways to deal with particular kids with bizarre behaviors. After about five years, I moved to another new school and became a regular classroom teacher. I taught third and then fourth grade.

In 1980, I took a group of people to Oberammergau to the passion play and fell in love with the travel business. I eventually opened my own business focusing on accessibility and making it possible for people with significant physical disabilities to travel safely and comfortably.

Mike and I met in the early ’80s at dinner with mutual friends. We were in our early thirties. Mike was working for Kurzweil and traveled constantly. I was working as a full-time travel agent by 1982, after taking a leave of absence from the classroom. I started handling Mike’s travel arrangements. We went two months without seeing each other again because of our schedules, but Mike was relentless. He called me every single day.

We liked going to the movies together, and we really liked to talk. I had a comfortable feeling with him, like I didn’t have to entertain him. He seemed to enjoy just being with me and talking to me. We just fit. After a few months, we just grew into a couple. One day he came over, and he was burning up with fever. He had just returned from a convention in Minneapolis, where he had contracted Legionnaires’ disease. I moved him to my parents’ house, and he lay on my parents’ couch for two weeks. My dad took care of him because I had to work.

Mike never really proposed. One day we were driving near my apartment in Santa Ana, and the subject of marriage came up at a stoplight. By the time the light turned green, we had decided to get married. A few days later Mike showed up at the travel agency. I was busy on the phone with a customer, and Mike didn’t care. He grabbed my hand and slid a diamond ring on my finger. “I think I have to stop talking to you now,” I told my client.

We got married at Irvine United Methodist Church on November 27, 1982. Mike wore a white tuxedo. I wore a white gown with a high neck and a white hat. The church was decorated in autumn colors and peachy-pink roses. The wedding was scheduled for 4 p.m., and we were expecting about 225 people. But 4:00 came and went, and the church was only about half full. At exactly 4:12 p.m., the doors opened, and the church filled up as people rushed in. Hours later, we learned that the mysteriously missing guests had been out in their cars, listening to the USC– Notre Dame game. My dad also graduated from USC, so we were all loyal fans and excited that they won on our wedding day.

Dad pushed me down the aisle in my wheelchair, and Mike was waiting at the front with his guide dog Holland. We had two ministers because we couldn’t pick between them, and we said traditional vows.

After we were pronounced husband and wife, Mike pushed me back down the aisle, out into the sunset. We all headed to beautiful San Juan Capistrano for a reception at our favorite Mexican restaurant. After dinner Mike and I danced to Anne Murray’s “Could I Have This Dance (for the Rest of My Life)”? Mike kept saying over and over to anyone who would listen, “Isn’t she beautiful?”

I don’t think I’ve ever been loved by anybody as much as he loves me.

(And I hope he knows I love him back just as much. Or more!)

I’m not a man who cries easily. I can count on one hand the times I remember crying. But a sob rises in my throat when I hear Karen.

“Hello?” Her voice is quick and sharp. It’s higher pitched than usual. It’s just about the best sound I’ve ever heard in my life.

“Karen, it’s me. I’m okay. I am out. Roselle and I made it out of the tower.”

I hear Karen weeping on the phone. It’s 10:32 a.m., almost two hours since our phone call just after the explosion above my office. Then we are quiet, with nothing else to say just yet.

You know what they say about the two becoming one in marriage? It’s true. Just like Roselle and I are close partners, relying on each other in a symbiotic relationship that transcends the average dog-owner relationship, so, too, do Karen and I rely on each other. We are both wounded. Our bodies don’t work quite right. While I have been blind from birth, Karen has been paralyzed from birth. She can’t walk and gets around in a wheelchair. She is my eyes, and I am her feet. We need each other. Like most other guys, I don’t like to ask for help, and growing up blind intensified my natural bent toward independence. I’ve always been used to figuring things out, doing my homework and finding ways to adapt and even excel. But I need Karen. She is beautiful inside and out. She keeps me grounded with her common sense. She matches me wit for wit. Her creativity and wisdom light up my life. She loves dogs. And she drives me around. What more could a guy want?

Because we both have managed to thrive in a world where our needs are not often met, we are kindred spirits, two halves of one soul. And today, we were almost torn apart.

Before we hang up, Karen tells me what is really going on. There are terrorists—no one knows how many—carrying out a coordinated attack on the United States. There are four airplanes involved so far, maybe more. The first plane hit our building, Tower 1. Fifteen minutes later, a plane struck Tower 2, the twin to our building. A third plane attacked the Pentagon. A fourth plane is still unaccounted for. Every plane across the country has been grounded, and the president is in hiding. No one knows what is going on or what will happen next. New York is in chaos, the country at a standstill. And the world is watching.

I breathe it all in. It’s hard to accept. We are quiet for a moment. Then I tell her I love her and close up my phone. I want to get out of here. David, Roselle, and I continue trudging north, joining the throngs trying to flee Manhattan by car, bicycle, and on foot. At some point we cut back over to Broadway and decide to rest on a bench at a small Chinatown plaza near Canal Street, called Chatham Square. We sit down near a statue of Lin Ze Xu, a national hero of China who battled the foreign-backed opium trade in the nineteenth century.

I pull out my portable radio from my book bag and start scanning AM stations. All of them are reporting on what is happening at the World Trade Center. The mayor is on, asking everyone to remain calm. He goes over the details, most of which Karen already told me. Then he fields questions from the press. We listen for ten minutes or so, Roselle asleep on my shoes. Then the mayor gives us direct orders. Everyone is asked to evacuate to points north of Canal Street. Our rest is over. Once again, we get up and head north.

David remembers a friend who lives in Manhattan, a woman named Nina Resnick. He calls and tells her what we’ve been through and asks if we can stop at her apartment. She agrees without hesitation and tells us she will meet us there in a couple of hours.

We walk some more, and at noon we find a small Vietnamese restaurant open. I order soup. The warmth is soothing, and my muscles begin to relax with Roselle asleep at my feet. David is too shaken to eat, but the noodles are just about the best thing I’ve ever eaten. As I sit at the table, I feel almost like a windup toy that’s been keyed up but is now slowly winding down. Suddenly I hear jets outside. Everyone freezes.
What’s going on?

Then from outside someone shouts, “It’s the Air Force! There are jets on patrol.” The entire restaurant bursts into applause. For the first time in hours, I feel safe.

My only concern was to get home
after a hard day’s work.
ROSA PARKS

W
e hitch a ride to Nina’s apartment in midtown with some people in a van. They don’t speak much English, but when they see us, they know what we have been through and are eager to help.

We hit the buzzer at Nina’s building a few times, but she doesn’t answer. Grimy and exhausted, we sit in the lobby and wait. Roselle slumps down between my feet and immediately begins to snore. I wish I could join her. It’s about one fifteen in the afternoon.

Thirty minutes later, Nina arrives, loaded down with grocery bags. She had been out shopping for food for us. The stores were packed with people in a panic, buying up everything they could find. Roselle perks up and wags her tail, happy to meet someone new. We head up to the apartment and sit down. Nina turns on the radio for us then heads into the kitchen to unpack the groceries. For the next couple of hours, we eat, watch TV, listen to the news, and talk. Like the rest of the country, we try to make sense out of something that ultimately makes no sense.

After a while, David pulls his laptop out of his briefcase and begins to write down what we’ve experienced today. I left mine in my office in the World Trade Center. It is now part of what the reporters are calling “the rubble.”

I want to go home but lower Manhattan is still being evacuated, and the mayor tells everyone else to stay put. Everything is shutting down, including the trains and buses. Many airports have been closed, and incoming overseas flights are being diverted into Canada. The borders have been closed.

President Bush announces that U.S. Armed Forces around the world are on “high-alert status” and that all appropriate security precautions have been taken: “Make no mistake, the United States will hunt down and punish those responsible for these cowardly acts.”
¹
The Pentagon announces that warships and aircraft carriers are moving into strategic positions around New York and Washington, D.C.

As I listen to the news, above all it’s clear that thousands of people have lost their lives. On an average workday, 35,000 people are in the World Trade Center towers by 9 a.m. Estimates of the number of casualties fluctuate wildly, but later it will turn out that on September 11, each tower held between 5,000 and 7,000 people.
²
The lighter number is perhaps due to the early hour and the fact that the date coincided with Election Day as well as the first week of school. We won’t find out for weeks, but eventually authorities will put the number of people who died in the attacks on the World Trade Center at 2,825 people.
³

By the grace of God and my guide dog, I am not one of them.

A voice mail alert pops up on my cell phone. Karen has called, leaving a message that a friend of ours has made it home to New Jersey by train from Manhattan. After some debate with David and Nina, I decide to try to go home. David’s plan is to head to a friend’s place on the Upper East Side. If I can get to Penn Station somehow and if the trains are running, I can catch a train to New Jersey. If it’s at all possible, I am confident that Roselle and I can do it. It will be nothing compared to what we have been through.

After thanking Nina for providing a safe haven, we start our journey home. David, Roselle, and I walk a few blocks and then make a happy discovery: the buses are running, and there is no cost. We hop on a bus to Thirty-third Street and Sixth then climb down and walk a block to Penn Station.

It’s 5:30 in the evening when David and I say good-bye. Our parting is quick but emotional. We have been through hell together. Just a few hours before, we had started a routine day in the office. It has been anything but.

David has been a good friend today, and I hope I have been a good friend to him. I think back to the other people we encountered during the day, both in the tower and outside. As our paths intersected, I tried to help whoever I could.

The experiences of today, as nightmarish as they have been, are also an opportunity, a chance to learn and to grow. I’m not sure yet what the lessons are, but I know they will be there. As David and I part, I set my face toward home. Roselle and I need rest.

“Forward,” I say to my dear Roselle. The station is packed, bustling with people fleeing Manhattan for safer places. We head downstairs and board a train for Newark. The train is packed. People notice the dust still clinging to the creases and folds of my clothes and Roselle’s fur. They know we are fleeing the World Trade Center. They want to know everything.

Were you in the Towers?

Did you hear the plane hit?

How long did it take you to get out?

Talking is hard.

Roselle and I arrive in Newark, New Jersey, and switch to the Westfield train on track 5. I call Karen to let her know we’re getting close. She had been standing by to drive the van and fetch us in Newark if the Westfield train hadn’t been running.

At seven o’clock in the evening, we make it to Westfield. We climb down from the train, and my ears pick up the unmistakable sound of our van pulling up to the curb. Our dear friend Tom Painter is driving, with Karen seated in the back. The door slides open, and Roselle and I scramble in. Our reunion is joyous. I am home.

A few minutes later, we arrive at the house to an excited greeting from Linnie, my retired guide dog. She wags her tail, her whole body wiggling with joy. Then she sniffs us thoroughly.

I take care of Roselle first. I pull off her harness and try to give her a good brushing to remove as much of the dust and debris as I can, but for once she won’t stand still. She runs off like she’s on a mission and comes back in a few minutes with her prized Booda Bone, a braided rope with a big knot on each end. Roselle prances around with the rope bone in her mouth and Linnie trailing behind, hoping for a game of tug-of-war.

I think over the day’s events. From the initial explosion and tower leaning, to the stairwell descent, the mad flight from the collapsing tower, the trek through the dust cloud, the discovery of the subway station, the long walk through Manhattan, and the journey home, it has been a very long day. And while I am spent, Roselle seems to have recovered already. And she hasn’t even been outside yet.

Later, in the shower, I relax as the hot water washes away the dust and the sweat.
I am alive. Roselle and I made it
.

Karen orders moo shu pork, General Tso’s chicken, and egg rolls from our favorite Chinese takeout. When the food arrives, Karen, Tom, and I enjoy a quiet meal. The television murmurs in the background as the media rehashes the day, but our focus is on each other. There were several times during the day when I thought I would never see Karen again. But here we are, safe and together. And much of the credit goes to Roselle.

My body begins to tingle with fatigue, and I head upstairs to bed. Roselle takes her place on the floor next to my side of the bed. She sleeps peacefully. The storm is over.

After September 11, everything changed. Thousands perished. For some reason Roselle and I survived.

When I woke up the next morning, my emotions were numb, but my body was not. I could barely move. Every muscle ached, and I was so stiff it took me ten minutes to get out of bed. I released Roselle and Linnie from their tie-downs, and they began bouncing around the room, winding themselves up for a game of chase. I moaned and groaned as I pulled on my robe and tied the belt, then bit my tongue so I didn’t wake up Karen.

Even my hands were sore. I shuffled across the room and down the hall, the dogs running ahead. Each step was agony. My calves, thighs, and hips screamed in protest. I thought back to the long, long stairwell.
No marching briskly down seventy-eight flights of stairs for me today. I would have a hard time making it down
.

I took Karen’s elevator downstairs to let the dogs out then limped around the kitchen and put on some hot water for a cup of PG tips. I was spreading butter on a toasted English muffin when it hit me.
There’s no more office to go back to
.

I stopped, holding the knife over the muffin, and memories of the day before began to rush back, replaying in my head. I again heard the noise of the towers falling, the frightened screams, and the breaking glass. I shook my head, trying to clear it out.
Enough
.

I tightened my grip on the knife and turned my attention back to the muffin. There would be time later to think through everything that had happened. For now, I just wanted to enjoy my breakfast. And I did. It was delicious. In fact, I think it was the best meal I ever had.

Karen and I spent the day resting, fielding calls from friends and family, and consulting my doctor and Roselle’s vet. I started on a course of antibiotics to forestall any looming respiratory issues from having inhaled dust and fumes. There were already reports about toxins in the dust cloud, including asbestos. Roselle’s vet advised no special treatment for her, just rest and routine.

I also gave Guide Dogs for the Blind a call to let them know Roselle and I were okay. I asked them how to take care of Roselle. Was there anything I needed to do to help her recover from working through such a catastrophic experience?

“Dogs live in the moment,” they reminded me, explaining that Labrador retrievers are so adaptable that they generally bounce back from traumatic events quickly with no lingering ill effects. And as Roselle romped around with Linnie, I detected no soreness or fatigue. If only I could say the same.

The realization reassured me. If Roselle’s mind and emotions recovered as quickly as her body, then she was in good shape. There didn’t seem to be any fear or timidity in her. She didn’t act shell-shocked at all. I don’t think she was reliving the sights and sounds of yesterday. She was much more interested in where Linnie hid the Booda Bone.

E-mail Message from Guide Dogs for the Blind

From: Betsy Irving

Sent: Wednesday, September 12, 2001 12:22 p.m.

To: All Guide Dogs for the Blind Employees (all sites)

Subject: World Trade Center

We, in the Puppy Raising Department at Guide Dogs for the Blind, thought you would want to know this story. Thank you again for raising an outstanding guide.

I received a call from graduate Michael Hingson with Roselle, Yellow Lab, Class #606. He was in the World Trade Center yesterday in the Number One tower on the 78th floor when the first plane hit. Luckily, the plane hit the other side of the building. He and Roselle walked down 78 floors to get out of the building. He, along with his staff and many others, met firefighters going up. Shortly after they exited the building, the Number Two tower collapsed, so they were moving quickly down the street to get out of the way of the debris. He made it home last night about 7 p.m. after staying with a friend in mid-Manhattan until the trains were running again. He said Roselle was a trooper through the whole ordeal!

It was a quiet morning. When Karen came downstairs, she mentioned that outside she could see the smoke rising from the site of the World Trade Center, twenty miles away.

We were glued to the TV for most of the day. Reporters covered the ongoing search for survivors in the rubble, along with the national effort to secure likely terrorist targets, such as airports, power plants, government buildings, and bridges. We watched footage of firefighters, police officers, and Port Authority employees in shock and grieving their losses. Thousands of New Yorkers were out posting pictures of their missing loved ones in the public areas of Manhattan in hopes that someone, somewhere, could help them find the lost.

In the afternoon, I got a call that surprised me. Joanne Ritter at Guide Dogs for the Blind wanted to put some feelers out to the media. She wanted to know if I was willing to be interviewed. I agreed, not thinking much of it. Then she asked, “If you could talk to the host of any television show, who would it be?” Without thinking, I mentioned Larry King.

The next day Joanne called back and said Larry’s people would be calling. Friday night, Roselle and I were in the Green Room at CNN’s New York studios with Karen and Tom Painter. I felt more than a little overwhelmed. Monday had been a normal workday. Tuesday had been hell. Wednesday and Thursday I was exhausted and in shock. And here it was Friday, and I was about to tell my story to Larry King and his millions of viewers around the world.

E-mail Message from Roselle’s Puppy Raisers

From: Kay and Ted Stern

Sent: Friday, September 14, 2001

To: Michael Hingson

Subject: Thank God

We just heard from Guide Dogs for the Blind that you and Roselle are safe and that you both had a truly harrowing escape from your World Trade Center offices. We are so thankful and proud of you two partners to be able to work together and survive under the most testing of circumstances. We had sent you an email immediately after the attack and not hearing a response were very concerned. We are so relieved that you both are okay. Amidst the sadness we all have much for which to be grateful. We are sitting here embracing our nine-week-old service dog puppy that we are raising for Canine Companions for Independence and we all send you, your wife, and Roselle puppy kisses and hugs.