Eleanor

I looked up and saw the desparation in the fireman's eyes, watched as the last glimmer of hope fizzled and disappeared. We were huddled in the corner of the winding staircases of the South Tower of the World Trade Center, unable to move. Before us, a broken wall had collapsed and behind us stood a line of panicking people too long to move back.

It wasn't that we could go back there anyway. There was simply, nothing to go back to.

Turning, I saw the dust covered faces of the children from the childcare center I worked at staring up at me and swallowed back a sob. The realization hit me with the force of a wrecking ball.

There's no where else to go. There's nothing else we can do.

Desparation clawed at me throat and somewhere deep inside, the instinct to live fought to be free. I wanted nothing more than to clamber over the shattered rubble and scramble to safety. I wanted nothing more than to pull away from the small hand wrapped in my own and run. I wanted nothing more than to get home and leave this terrible place behind me.

But I couldn't.

Squeezing my eyes tight, I let the images of my children, of my wife, as I'd seen them that morning, run across my mind. The emotion that threatened to overtake me swelled to the size of a tennis ball and lodged in the back of my throat.

I was never going to go home again.

The firefighter placed a hand on my arm and took off his helmet. His brown eyes seemed to be filling with tears. Neither of us wanted to look at the children behind us.

"There's nothing else we can do," he said softly. Against the sound of exploding gas pipes and crashing rubble, it was a wonder I even heard him.

"I know." I replied.

"What are we going to do?" He said, glancing quickly at the kids.

I looked behind me and felt like life had just played us a cruel, cruel joke. This couldn't be happening, it had to be a horrible, horrible dream.

But it was.

It was happening right now. Already, we had passed the bodies of people we'd shared coffee breaks with, gossiped over biscuits and tea with. There was no more wishing for things to be different.

Unconsciously, I reached for the cellphone in my pocket - a decrepit looking thing that my wife always insisted I carry everywhere with me - and pressed the number two. Speed dial took care of the rest.

When she answered, her voice was shaking. "Travis! Thank god you're okay. I just saw the news and ohmygod, Travis - people are jumping out of the towers. They're dying and ... ohmygod... what's happening?"

"Eleanor," I begin, turning away from the kids and the firemen so that they wouldn't see the tears that was spilling down my face.

"Travis?" she was still crying.

"Eleanor, I want you to tell the kids that I love them, okay?"

"Oh my god, no. I don't want t.. No... Don..." Eleanor was sobbing now. Breaking. My strong, independent, beautiful wife was breaking. She was breaking over the phone and of all the things that I wanted to tell her, to confess, to admit to, I couldn't say anything.

All I could think of was that Eleanor was breaking and that I was never going to hold her in my arms ever again.

"I love you, Eleanor. God, I love you so much, okay? Don't ever doubt that."

"NOOOO! Travis! Come home, you hear me! Don't you dare... Oh my god..."

"I don't think I'll be able to come home, tonight. You'll tell the kids I love them, won't you?"

There was silence now. Either Eleanor had stepped away from the phone or was holding it away from her face, I didn't know. For a second, I was scared that she'd hung up on me. Then, that shaking voice again.

"I will. I will."

"I love you Eleanor."

She sobbed a bit more. "I love you too, Travis."

And that was when the second blow shattered through the walls that had barely managed to stay standing as it were. The phone fell from my hand and through my tears, I couldn't find where it had landed. Turning to the children, to the children who had once called me Mister Trawis, I pulled as many of them into my own arms and imagined my own children in their seats in class, learning biology and chemistry. I imagined my own children safe and sound, far far away from here, and I thought of their mother, breaking on our kitchen floor.

I thought of the others who might have been able to get out in time, and I thought of those who worked in the floors above us. As the ceilings crumbled from above us and the screams of the people in the staircase filled the air, I thought of the first thing I'd told my wife that morning and I thought of how she'd smiled when she turned over in bed. I thought of our daily morning rituals. Funny little things.

"Good mornin', Sexy."

"Mornin', Hun!"

And I thought of how I'd never get the chance to say that to her again. Unbidden, my lips formed the words before my mind had the luxury to think them.

"Eleanor, I love you."

And then, darkness.