So many thousands have been silently pleading for miracles beneath the rubble in New York and Washington this past week. For this reason, fully 10 days after the vicious attacks upon America’s icons of power, no one wants to issue the sad declaration that the massive rescue operations have become ones of recovery.
Theirs is a hope built upon anecdotes of people surviving 11, 12 days after being trapped in other destructions such as earthquakes or avalanches. Hearts have gone to battle with minds, as we remind ourselves again and again about the resilience of the human spirit.
Those awesome piles seem to have yielded precious few miracles, however. One of the few came on the day of the attack, when Port Authority canine officer David Lim was plucked from the wreckage after spending four or five hours trapped amid steel and ash.
There have been plenty of other kinds of wonders, though, such as the miracle of courage shown by surviving employees of the bond trading firm Cantor Fitzgerald. Despite the loss of nearly 700 workers and the admonitions of company chairman Howard Lutnik to stay home and be with their loved ones, those remaining returned to work when the bond market reopened.
They did so to support the loved ones of those who were killed. People like Helen Zaccoli, whose husband, Joseph Zaccoli, a municipal bond broker, was on the 104th floor when the World Trade Center fell. Rescue workers somehow managed to find her husband’s wedding ring–inscribed with the words “Till death”–amid the wreckage.
For understandable reasons, other small miracles have simply escaped our attention. There is the first human recipient of a completely internal artificial heart, for example. Astonishingly, Bob Tools is still alive. This is a man who, when the new device was implanted July 2, was given a 9 percent chance of surviving a single month. Doctors announced Wednesday, 79 days later, that Tools now takes daily walks around the hospital and is listening to his favorite jazz CDs.
Then there was a 10-year-old California girl in such critical need of a new liver last week that she topped the national organ list. One finally came available the morning of Sept. 11. But because all flights were suddenly grounded, doctors were unable to fly the cadaver liver in from New Mexico. Seven anxious days passed as doubts grew about whether she would survive. Last Tuesday, however, brought another liver–this time from Southern California. The girl today is in stable condition at a Stanford University hospital.
So keep looking for miracles, but look everywhere. Plenty have occurred these past nine days, even if few have occurred in the places we’ve been focusing all our hopes.
