Chapter 1

To me, it was kind of ironic. On September 11, 2001, I had been on my way to one of the towers when it got hit. I was on my way to apply for a job. I watched from sixteen blocks away as the second plane hit. I was devastated, not because I lost a job before I even applied for it, but because of the massive loss of life, and the thought that I could have been in there.

September 11, 2003. I had found another job, but soon got tired of the bullshit politics. I had made arrangements to take a day off to go and interview at another job. Of course the boss I had didn’t know. At six fifteen, my alarm went off. At six thirty, or there about, I was knocked out cold. It was three years before I would know what hit me.

For almost three years, two weeks short, I lay in a coma. I had no idea where I was, or what had happened to me when I woke up. Both of my sisters were there, and they were arguing about something. It took me a few minutes to realize where I was. I was in a hospital bed with my head propped up. I opened my eyes and looked right at them. They didn’t notice right away.

“Will you two ever stop?” I said. My voice was raspy, and it hurt to talk. My mouth was also dry. “I need a drink over here.” I sounded like an old man.

At first they just looked and stared at me in disbelief. Then all hell broke loose. I had half the hospital staff in my room within half a minute. It took several hours of tests, but they finally filed out. They told my sisters to go on home, that I needed my rest. They refused to go.

“Well, big brother,” Kate said. She is three years younger than me. “You have a lot of catching up to do.”

“I know.” My voice and throat were better now. They gave me a spray to use. “I’ve been out for ... what ... three years?”

“Yeah,” Jen said. She is my older sister. She is eleven months behind me.

“I can’t wait to see the look on Mom and Dad’s faces. Do they know?” It was then that I realized that neither of them had made direct eye contact with me since the room cleared out. “They do know I’m awake, right?”

“Kevin...” Kate started. She turned away from me and put her face in her hands.

“Mom and Dad ... are gone,” Jen said, then they both began to cry. “We thought you were dead too when we heard what happened. We thought we’d lost all three of you.”

“What happened?” I asked. “Please. Tell me what happened.”

“You do know that it was 9-11, right?” Kate asked. I nodded. “There was a commercial air jet that was passing over our neighbourhood and ... lost a wing. It took sixteen houses with it, and there were only two survivors ... you and Jenny Blake down the street. They said that it was lucky that it didn’t blow up.”

“Everyone else was killed instantly. You had seventeen broken bones, and Jenny came out without a scratch. Mom’s house was the first one hit. In total, there were seventeen adults and twenty children killed. There wouldn’t have been as many, but the Johanssons had family in from Sweden.”

We went on talking about it until I just couldn’t hold my eyes open anymore. They still refused to leave my side.

As it turned out, the wing that hit our house had actually been on the airline’s “maintenance list”. They were going to take it up at least one more time after the flight where the wing fell off. The pilot was able to land in a huge cornfield about twenty miles away. He had been headed for it when he lost the wing.

If the girls hadn’t moved out three weeks earlier, they would have been the first ones dead. The first impact was right over their old room. Mom and Dad were in their room, next door, and I was in mine in the basement. I found out later that they found my parents three feet from where I lay.

“By the way,” I said during lunch the next day. “What were you two arguing about yesterday?”

“Oh ... nothing,” Kate said.

“Nothing my ass,” Jen contradicted. “We were arguing over whose turn it was to give you a bath, and do your exercises.”

“Give me a bath? You two?”

“Uh ... yeah,” Kate said. “We’ve been doing it for as long as anyone was able to give you one. You had a lot of broken bones, and couldn’t be moved for almost a year. When you were able to be moved around safely, they were short-handed here.”

“So we took over some of the duties for them, and got stuck with them,” Jen said.

“Got stuck, my ass,” Kate said. “You practically shoved the nurses out of here.”