Katie Up and Down the Hall: The True Story of How One Dog Turned Five Neighbors Into a Family (23 page)

Most distressing to me, Pearl’s always sharp mind was now a bit vague. Some days, she seemed disoriented and distracted. I’d
find her wandering around outside near our local drugstore, window-shopping, with a blank look on her face. But she snapped
right back to her old self once we started talking, forcing her to focus.

“How’s my sweet little girlie?” she cooed at Katie, who jumped right up on her Granny, as always.

“Ouch! Those nails are sharp. When are you going to see Betty?”

While previously always in command of Katie while walking her, Pearl was now almost pulled off-balance when Katie pulled back
on the leash, as she was often prone to do.

After a general checkup, we learned that Oldest had high blood pressure and that she was also anemic, which explained why
she seemed dizzy at times, often wobbly on her feet. Her overall energy level was faltering.

Although never one to speak about her health, Pearl now complained about cramps, stomach pains, and problems with digestion.
She delayed going to a specialist, though I pushed her to do it. Right into the summer of 2001, I continued lecturing her
about having an exam. “You’ve got to take care of yourself and get that colonoscopy.”

“Stop it!” she snapped. “I’ll do it when I’m ready. Stop worrying. I’m fine.” But she really wasn’t, which is why I found
it difficult to stop myself from nagging her.

Meanwhile, Katie was now a dowager with various ailments of her own, mostly arthritis and failing vision. At age thirteen,
although she was still happy to walk outside and game to chase her blue rubber ball up and down the hall, she couldn’t run
as fast or as long as before, and she sometimes bumped into the wall.

“Katie has cataracts,” Dr. Simon told me, “though she’s still seeing most of what she needs to. Eventually we can consider
removing them, but for now, let’s leave her alone.”

We had always walked the three flights of cement stairs up from and down to the lobby of our building. But Katie slipped one
day, falling down the stairs and landing on her side. She let out a screech and was crying in pain—and confusion. I scooped
her up in my arms to soothe her, feeling terrible about it, and took her to the vet for an X-ray. “Katie,” Dr. Simon told
me, “was very lucky. Nothing broken or bruised—just her ego.”

But after that, we always took the elevator, as Katie no longer had the strength in her legs, or the balance, to negotiate
the steps.

Likewise, although my dog tried to jump on my bed as she always had when she was ready for a nap or bedtime, she could no
longer make it. One day I saw her try to make the jump, but she fell backward onto the carpet—looking bewildered and
indignant. After that, I purchased a little carpeted staircase of three steps that allowed her to walk up on the bed. That
problem was solved.

“My little girl is getting to be a senior!” cooed Pearl, still avidly interested in every aspect of Katie’s care and condition.
Although she walked Katie less than she used to, she babysat her just as much as ever. But more and more of their time was
spent together in bed taking long naps, often with the TV blaring.

It was discouraging seeing them slowed down, frail, and, at times, so apathetic. And yet it was also incredibly sweet watching
these two soulmates snuggle together, each giving the other the comfort and tenderness they needed.

As for me, with Ryan and John gone, and Granny and Katie ailing, I wasn’t very happy, feeling that life in Battery Park City
was no longer the fun-filled place it once had been. I had no idea, however, how dramatically our lives were about to change.

T
uesday, September 11, 2001, was a picture-perfect day in New York City, sunny and warm. After an early-morning jog, I sat
at my computer typing letters, while Katie was lying under my desk, her head resting on my right foot, lazily content.

The view outside my window to the coast of New Jersey was dazzling that morning. The mirrored wall in my home office reflected
the clear blue skies and the Hudson River, smooth as glass with its commuter boats, small yachts, and sailboats. All of it
was framed by a lush row of trees so close to my windows that my office looked a little like an enchanted forest.

But the calm was shattered at 8:46 a.m. by a strange-sounding explosive boom that echoed through my apartment. The entire
building seemed to vibrate. At first, though, I ignored it.

Since there were always construction projects going on in the neighborhood, I assumed the noise was just routine, though it
was louder than anything I’d ever heard before.

Puzzled, I looked out at the river but saw nothing and returned to work.

Then the phone rang.

“Turn on the TV!” ordered Pearl, her voice uncharacteristically agitated. “An airplane just crashed into the World Trade Center.
Watch it.” And she hung up the phone.

I switched on the small TV in my office and was startled to see the North Tower of the Trade Center
on fire
.

I rushed into the living room, where I had a full view of the Twin Towers.

The crash and the small blaze seemed so peculiar. How could what emerging TV reports were describing as a “small commuter
plane” accidentally fly into such a mammoth building?

As smoke and flames poured out of the building, I had the surreal experience of watching this event unfold on TV while simultaneously
seeing it, directly from my windows.

Had it been Monday instead of Tuesday, I would have been in the Trade Center myself, on the way from the subway station there
to my volunteer job as a hotline counselor. I was in and out of the Towers daily; in addition to the subway, I was always
in the shopping arcade, frequenting the drugstore, newsstand, bakery, clothing stores, hotel, and bank.

A number of my neighbors worked in the Towers, and many of them were there on this day.

And now, as we would later learn, a team of al-Qaeda suicide hijackers had crashed American Airlines Flight 11 into the North
Tower, instantly killing as many as 600 people.

At first, it seemed as if the disaster was under control.

But seventeen minutes later, of course, a second team of hijackers crashed United Airlines Flight 175 into the South Tower.

Immediately after seeing
that
on TV and knowing that ours was the closest residential building to the Towers, perhaps next in line, I had to do something.

My heart was racing as I heard the high-pitched sound of police and fire truck sirens, getting louder and louder as they all
converged in the streets. I tucked Katie into my bedroom, snatched up my keys and wallet, and ran down the stairs to the lobby.

It was pandemonium.

Panicked tenants rushed out the front circular door, half-dressed, some fearfully asking questions, others in tears.

Through the floor-to-ceiling glass windows of the lobby, I could see people shouting and running wild—jumping over the hedges
and racing toward the Hudson.

Terrified mothers pushing baby carriages were everywhere, uncertain about what to do next.

Firefighters swarmed around the complex, overwhelmed and confused themselves.

Residents were practically assaulting our petrified doorman, Felipe, asking about evacuation plans for the building.

“You’ve got to get out!” was his brisk command. “Evacuate. Walk south.”

A woman I’d never seen before (or since) was lying on the lobby floor next to the couch, her face covered in blood. I dashed
back upstairs to grab some paper towels, Band-Aids, and bottled water, but when I got back downstairs, the woman was gone.

I ran back up the stairs again and knocked on Pearl’s door. She opened it looking shaken, very pale, and somewhat in shock.

“We’ve got to go now,” she said, locking up her door and leaving her apartment without her purse, just her house keys clutched
in her hand. She wasn’t dressed warmly enough, in a sleeveless, salmon-colored blouse and gray tweed skirt, but she probably
figured she’d be returning home soon.

“Granny,” I said, “you go downstairs and wait for me by the front desk. I’ll be right down. I just have to get Katie and my
cell phone. Wait for me!”

“All right,” she answered absently, “but hurry.”

As she walked down the hall to the elevator, she looked so frail, and yet so brave. My heart broke at just the sight of her.
Here she was, nearly ninety, not in the greatest of spirits or health and having to face something like this.

When I got back inside my apartment, I turned off the lights and TV and put a few blank checks in my wallet. I scooped Katie
up, frantically hitching her to her red leash, and then rushed to the elevator. Having already been out for a walk just a
few hours earlier, she dragged behind me, resistant to my disrupting her nap schedule.

When I got down to the front desk, Granny was gone.

“Felipe,” I asked nervously, “where’s Pearl?” And he pointed out toward the back door, just behind his desk. “She just walked
away,” he said, accosted on all sides by other tenants.

Why in the world would Granny leave without me? I rushed out back behind our building, and carefully surveyed the walkway
in both directions, searching furiously, but Pearl was gone.

As we headed south on the Esplanade, Katie was a stalwart little soldier. She walked obediently beside me, though she was
clearly petrified by the loud noises and wild stampede of people swarming around us. She had always hated loud sounds—and
this was the worst. But with an anxious look in her eye, her head swinging from side to side, she plowed on, limping slightly
due to arthritis.

“
Dad, I’m afraid
!” she seemed to tell me with those worried brown eyes. “
Please, I can’t walk. Let’s go home
.”

“Katie, no, no, we can’t go back. Come on, you can do it. Let’s go!”

After a few more minutes, I stopped and just picked Katie up in my arms, staring up at the burning Towers, watching those
poor souls trapped inside, many of them huddled at the windows, gasping for air.

I noticed a young child nearby, naively looking up at this burning inferno and remarking to his mom, “Look, Mommy,
birds
!” His mom shielded his eyes, for those “birds” were actually people jumping out of the smoke-filled windows.

Horrified, I turned away.

And then, just a few moments later, at 9:59 a.m., as we continued trudging south, I felt a ferocious vibration, a horrible
kind of ominous rumble. The South Tower had collapsed, toppling to the ground like an accordion, though I had no idea what
was happening at the time.

We were suddenly in a total blackout—with thick black dust and debris raining down on us. I would later read that 2,000 tons
of asbestos and 424,000 tons of concrete were used to build the Twin Towers, and half of it now came crashing down, the air
laden with toxins.

The formerly sunny sky was instantly blackened by this thunderstorm of suffocating soot and ash. You could feel the heat of
the explosion on your face. I was coughing and couldn’t see anything in front of me.

Standing there in silence, surrounded by hundreds of others, I had no idea what to do next. I bent down to check on Katie
and panicked when I saw that she had fallen over and was choking, unable to breathe.

I frantically brushed away the black soot from her face and
picked her up in my arms, shouting to a firefighter coming toward us. I pulled him by his arm as he tried to rush by me. “Please,
please, stop! I need your help. My dog isn’t breathing.”

His face was dripping with sweat as he bent down and took a quick look at Katie. “Her nose is packed with soot,” he said—and
then blasted water into her nose using a pressurized water bottle he had in his hand, telling me it would force her to expel
the dust. And it worked! She immediately sprang to life again, stood up, and climbed into my arms.

“Thank you!” I told him, incredibly grateful and relieved, but he was already gone.

At this moment, in the midst of the utter chaos and confusion, I oddly enough felt taken care of, even comforted, for nothing
but kindness prevailed.

People held hands and offered bottles of water, tissues, and wet towels. I saw younger people holding onto the arms of seniors,
guiding them patiently away from the explosion. Without any pushing, neighbors young and old, with babies and dogs, trooped
south, where police boats were waiting to evacuate everyone to New Jersey.

Firefighters passed around dust masks for the elderly and children, but there weren’t enough for everyone. An older woman
next to me was coughing badly, so I took off my shirt, poured water over it, and gave it to her. “Cover your face and breathe
through it,” I told her, relieved to be cool in just a T-shirt.

And then, at 10:28 a.m., another implosion began, the same horrible noise as before, as astonishingly, the North Tower collapsed.

“Down, down, down!” shouted a nearby policeman, screeching at the top of his lungs. “Get on the ground, now, everybody, stomach
down!” And we threw ourselves onto the pavement, covering our heads, buried in dust. Katie was under
my chest, protected, breathing heavily as she cowered beneath me, now shivering. “Shhhhh, Shhhhh,” I told her, holding her
in place. “It’s okay.”