The Woman Who Wasn't There

[MUSIC]

TANIA HEAD:
Just before 8:30,

I got a phone call, and it was

Dave,

and he said that that he just

wanted to go

and get some coffee,

and he asked me if I wanted to

meet him,

and, um... I, I said that I was

just about to go into the,

into a meeting, and that I

couldn't, I couldn't do it,

and I said, "I love you and talk

to you later."

And that was the last time I, I

ever spoke to him.

[MUSIC]

TANIA HEAD:
It was amazing, and

you know,

it was that kind of crazy love

story where we would finish

each other's sentences...

[MUSIC]

TANIA HEAD:
We were so alike,

like but some people say

opposites attract,

but for me, it was different.

It was like he and I were almost

the same person.

[MUSIC]

TANIA HEAD:
Sometimes he was

explosive, but it was,

it was definitely a love story.

[MUSIC]

TANIA HEAD:
That day, I didn't

just lose Dave.

I lost myself.

[MUSIC]

[WIND]

[CROWD TALKING]

LORI:
How are you?

MALE VOICE #1:
I get hot when

they do this.

FEMALE VOICE #1:
We have like...

FEMALE VOICE #2 I don't know,

eight? Eight left?

TANIA HEAD:
It's the morning of

September 11th,

and we're all gonna go to the

official ceremony at the site,

and we hope to make it there by

the first moment of silence at

8:
46.

It's one of the hardest

experiences of my life

to go down that ramp every

anniversary,

but I do it for Dave because I,

I knew he,

he wants me to be there, but let

me show you something.

[Giggles & rustling paper]

Dave and I met outside the World

Trade Center

when he stole my cab.

So, every year when I go to the

site,

I bring a New York City cab with

me,

and I put it in the reflection

pool

so that he knows that I remember

that day.

[Bell chimes]

[MUSIC]

[MUSIC]

TANIA HEAD:
Some of my

co-workers had families,

they that had little kids, and

they died, and I didn't.

So, why?

Why? Why am I special? Why, why

was I spared?

Why didn't they make it? Why

was, why did I make it?

Was it God? Was it faith?

Was it because we have something

to do?

Was it because we were sheltered

by the elevator machinery?

It just makes you go crazy.

You go crazy asking yourself

why, why, why?

ELIA:
People kept saying how

blessed I was,

and I didn't feel blessed at

all.

I felt like it was a curse.

Survivor guilt made me feel

that,

made me actually go from the

question,

"Why did I survive?"

to "Why did I have to survive?"

GERRY BOGACZ:
I don't know how

to describe it.

It, it's sort of a pain in my,

in my, my, gut, you know,

and I remember actually doubling

over realizing,

"Oh, my God, those three people

were all on my side,

and I didn't get them out."

BRENDAN:
It's so hard to get

past being alive

when all these people aren't,

and I've had people say to me,

you know, "Oh, you're so lucky.

You got out of there. You must

feel great."

You don't.

[Massive fire sounds]

I woke up thinking about 9/11,

went to bed thinking about it,

dreamed about it, just couldn't

get out of it.

I mean, I just kept replaying

that day over and over

and over again.

Before I met Tania, I had talked

to, you know,

a couple of professional people,

and it really wasn't helping me.

I searched online,

and I joined the support group

that they had for survivors.

TANIA HEAD:
We started as an

online peer support group

where you could go into a Yahoo

group

and connect to other survivors

24 hours a day.

So, one day, you were having a

bad day,

and you would post it online,

and within 30 minutes,

you'd get 40 replies of people

saying,

"I know what you feel," you

know.

"It's okay to have those

feelings.

I'm here for you.

Just call me. Anything you

need."

LORI:
Many people were having

economic problems,

health problems, just a lot of

that sense of parallel reality

that people were heavily living

through, and I think,

to a large degree, still do, and

I think it was just,

just being with other people

and talking about this stuff

helped.

BRENDAN:
I had many

conversations with Tania,

just one-on-one conversations,

but she gave me a lot of support

like nobody else had.

ELIA:
I admired her from the

very beginning

how strong she seemed, and at

the same time,

once I started to get to know

her,

then I realized this whole

strength thing that she shows

is really a facade.

She's really in pain.

She's, she was, she seemed to be

really in pain, um,

and really, really distraught,

and, and I, and I said,

"Well, of course.

How could she not be?"

[MUSIC]

BRENDAN:
When I first heard

Tania's story,

she did not talk about it much,

and then one day,

she just wrote it out in its

entirety,

and it blew me away.

I mean, you know, we had all

been through horrible things,

but Tania's was just, just head

and shoulders

above anything else that any of

us had gone through.

[Police radio]

TANIA HEAD:
I started seeing

these flames, and I was like,

"Something's happening in the

other tower."

And I, I started thinking about

Dave right away.

I, I, the first thing I did was

starting to count floors

down from, from the top.

He was on the hundredth floor,

and I was like,

"Oh, my God, his floor is one of

the floors that has been hit."

A woman started screaming,

"There's another plane coming.

There's another plane coming."

[Plane engine & breaking glass]

[Explosion & fire]

The first thing I felt was,

was the, the air was sucked out

of my lungs like a,

like a change in pressure.

I, then I was flying.

I was flying through the air

from the impact.

I was just flying.

I remember very well the pain of

hitting the wall,

the marble wall, and then I,

then I remember the warmth from,

from the explosion, and then I

passed out.

[Fire sounds]

My back was, was on fire and my

arm, and I was,

I was smelling my own skin

burning.

I remember Welles Crowder, the

man with the red bandanna.

He had some type of cloth,

and I felt him use that to, to

put the flames out,

and um, he hugged me, and he

said, um,

"Just stay awake. Stay awake.

Help is coming."

[MUSIC]

I was, I was in the hospital

until Thanksgiving,

November, 2001, and my back was

really burned

and my arm was burned and I

couldn't walk.

So, I was in a wheelchair.

I couldn't even pull myself on

the wheelchair

because I only had one good arm.

(Laughs)

So, you know, between the

wheelchair, the trauma,

the loss, I, I didn't know where

to start.

It was just too hard.

It was like looking at a

mountain

that was 20,000 feet tall.

[MUSIC]

[MUSIC]

BRENDAN:
My story was so

insignificant

to what she went through that my

first reaction

writing to her was, "That's

horrible,"

and, "I don't belong in this

group,"

and a lot of people wrote that,

and she was very supportive,

saying, "No, you do.

You know, what we all went

through was equally important."

ELIA:
She was fabulous.

Here's this person who went

through so much

that who in the world could

possibly survive this,

yet she's a survivor.

Here she is. She's a survivor!

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes