United We Stand - Softcover

Eric Walters’ young adult novels have won numerous awards, including the Silver Birch, Blue Heron, Red Maple, Snow Willow, and Ruth Schwartz, and have received honours from UNESCO’s international award for Literature in the Service of Tolerance. He lives in Mississauga, Ontario.


From the Trade Paperback edition.

CHAPTER ONE

My eyes opened ever so slightly. The bed felt warm and soft, and all I wanted to do was sleep some more. But there was light coming through the window and I thought I really should get up . . . probably. I sat up and stretched and looked down at my hands. They were both cut, and there was a line of stitches extending from the palm of my left hand almost up to the wrist. My hand was throbbing. Then it all came back to me.

It was like some sort of bizarre dream–no, a nightmare–but I knew it was all real. There was the evidence, right there on my hands–the cuts, the gash that I got crawling through the debris and the dust storm and then scrambling away, unable to see or breathe, on all fours. I remembered thinking that I’d survived the plane crashing into the building, the explosion, the fire, the mad rush down the stairs, and the collapse of the building, only to die, suffocating, in the dust and debris.

I started to cough like I was still somewhere in that cloud of dust. There was something stuck in my throat. I continued to cough until I spat it out into my hand–thick, black phlegm. God knows what it was, but I figured almost anything could have been lining my throat and lungs. I wiped it on the side of the bedspread.

“Will!”

It was my mother. She was standing in my bedroom doorway. She looked so upset–she must have seen me wiping the gunk on the bedspread.

She burst into tears, rushed over, and threw her arms around me.

“I’m just . . . just so glad . . . you’re okay,” she sobbed.

“I’m fine . . . I’m good.”

“Let me look at you.”

She released her grip and leaned back so she could look me square in the eyes. She started crying again.

“I’m fine, honestly. You don’t have to cry.”

“Honey, these are tears of joy. I’m just so glad you’re all right. And your hand. How is your hand?”

She held up my left hand and looked at the stitches. Even I had to admit that it did look nasty, like I’d been in a knife fight–and lost.

“It must hurt terribly,” she said.

“Not really. It feels almost numb. It looks a lot worse than it is,” I said. “Speaking of which . . . you look awful.”

She laughed. I hadn’t expected that.

“I haven’t slept,” she said. “The two of you were coughing so badly all night.”

“We were? I didn’t notice . . . I thought I slept right through.”

“ You did. But it kept me awake. I had to be awake anyway, though, to check on your father because of his concussion.”

“Dad . . . is he okay?”

“He’s saying that he’s fine. Not that I know if I should believe him.”

“I want to see him,” I said as I yanked off the blankets and swung my feet to the floor. “Where is he?”

“He’s in the den.”

I climbed out of bed and stumbled slightly, my legs giving way under me. My mother reached out and took me by the arm to steady me. My legs were sore all over, particularly painful in a couple of spots, and I remembered then that my knees and legs were just as cut up and bruised as my hands.

“Let me help you,” my mother offered.

I didn’t argue. I felt like I needed her help. “I want to see Dad.”

She led me out of the bedroom, through the kitchen, and toward the den. The door was slightly ajar and I could hear him–he was talking to somebody. Gently I knocked on the door and pushed it open wider. He was standing by the window. He was alone, talking on the phone.

His face was all cut and bruised, and I was shocked at how swollen one side was. It hadn’t been that swollen last night. His left arm was in a sling, and I knew underneath his shirt were three fractured ribs. If he was coughing all night he would have been in a lot of pain.

He saw us, gave a little smile that was distorted by the swelling, and motioned for us to come in. He continued his conversation.

“I know there will be some complications involved in transferring that amount of money,” he said.

Unbelievable. Yesterday we’d both almost died and here he was doing business, like nothing had happened. I’d had some fleeting fantasy that somehow this would change his compulsion for working so hard, but I guess I was wrong. Business was business, and that would never–

“Hold on a second,” he said into the phone.

He put the phone down on the desk and walked over and wrapped his arms around me, giving me a gigantic hug. Maybe something had changed. I hugged him back and he groaned–I’d forgotten about his ribs.

“Sorry.”

“No need to apologize,” he said. “Just good to have your arms around me.”

I felt the same way.

He loosened his grip so he could look at me. “How you doing, kid?”

“I’m good.”

“You don’t seem so good.”

“Look who’s talking,” I said.

He chuckled. “I guess you’re right, but really, are you okay?”

“As okay as I can be. You?”

“I am now.” He let go of me. “Sit down, this will just take a minute . . . It’s important.”

He picked up the phone again. “Listen, Suzie, I just want–”

“Suzie is okay!” I exclaimed.

My father smiled and nodded.

I hadn’t even thought about her, or any of the other people in the office. Most of them would have gotten out, I thought, but not all of them . . . Some of those people would have died . . . So many people had died.

“You call Cam Peters back and you tell him I want one hundred thousand dollars deposited directly into an account I can use at my discretion. Tell him that is a direct order from me, and if he doesn’t do it immediately I’ll be paying him a visit myself, and I’m not half as pretty or polite as you.”

She said something I couldn’t hear and he laughed.

“Good. Good. So, I’ll see you here right after lunch.” Hearing this phone call about money and knowing my father the way I did, I had a good idea what was happening. He was going to start working, today, from here. He didn’t have an office–he didn’t even have a building–but it was going to take more than the collapse of the World Trade Center to stop him from doing business.

“And, Suzie, thanks for everything. I’m just so glad you’re . . . you’re . . . you got out. You know I love you.”

What was he saying? She was his assistant, his very young assistant, and he was saying all this right in front of–

“Suzie, you’re like family to me, like a daughter,” he said. “Now, are you sure you’re okay to come here today? If you don’t feel up to it I’ll understand . . . Okay, at least promise me that you’ll drive carefully.”

He put the phone down and turned to us. “Suzie is going to help me. I have to try to contact everybody, all the people in the office. I have to know if everybody . . . if everybody is okay.”

“They should be fine,” I said. “They all left before we did, and we got out.”

I’d been with my father–it was sort of like “take your kid to work” day at my school– in his office on the eighty-fifth floor, South Tower, of the World Trade Center. I’d been there when the first plane hit the North Tower. And my father wasn’t just the boss in his own office; he was the fire warden for the floor. Right away he’d ordered everybody in his office–all one hundred people–to stop whatever they were doing and evacuate the building. He’d given that order before the second plane hit our tower.

“I know they all left before us,” he said. “But what if some of them heard the P.A. announcement and decided to go back?”

Just after my father had chased everybody out of the office, and before that second plane hit our building, there had been an announcement over the P.A. saying that there was no danger, that people shouldn’t evacuate the South Tower, and that they should go back to their offices.

“They wouldn’t have done that . . . They wouldn’t have gone back . . . would they?”

He shook his head. “I have no way of knowing for sure,” he said, “but some of our traders get so focused on the deal that they’ll look for any excuse to get back to the office and start working again.”

I started to snicker.

“I know, I know, but I’m hoping to slow down myself.”

“Like today?” I asked.

“No choice today, but from now on there’ll be shorter hours, fewer evenings. You’ll see.”

“We’d like that, dear,” my mother said. “But seeing is believing.”

“Sometimes it’s the other way around. Believing is seeing.”

I sort of got what he was saying. We never would have got out of that building if we hadn’t believed. I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

“I think they were all out,” I said. “We were for sure the last ones in your office after the plane hit the building. Nobody else was there then, and I can’t imagine anybody coming back up after the plane hit.”

“I’m just afraid for anyone who might have been trying to come back,” he said. “Maybe someone was heading up the stairs and ended up on the...