I Am Pilgrim(54)

‘But I wasn’t angry at the hijackers – they were already dead. And it wasn’t because of the injuries I had received – c’mon, I was alive.

‘I was angry about injustice – about the uncaring way the world works. I knew a lot of ordinary people had died that day not because of fire or falling masonry but because of their compassion. It was their desperate attempts to save other human beings – often total strangers – that had ended up costing them their own lives.’

He took a sip of coffee, but I knew he didn’t want it. He was buying time, trying to work out how best to go on. I just waited. To my mind, he’d earned the right to take as long as he needed.

‘Ever think about how many disabled people were working in the Twin Towers that day?’ he asked finally.

‘No, it never crossed my mind either,’ he continued, ‘not until just after the planes hit. Of course, if you were in a wheelchair your problems were far worse than anyone’s – it wasn’t as if you could try to get out by elevator. That’s one thing we all know, isn’t it? Those signs are always warning us to use the stairs. But say you can’t walk? If I ever get trapped in a burning building, Mr Campbell, all I ask is that I can use my legs. Just an even chance to run or die. That’s not asking much, is it? An even chance.

‘There was a guy – he was working for a financial-services company – who had listened to all the fire drills and knew where his evacuation chair was. Ever seen one of those? It’s like an aluminium dining chair with long handles that stick out front and back so people can lift and carry you.

‘He was a paraplegic, and I suppose he was proud he’d overcome his disability and had a job. Might have had a wife and kids too, you never know.

‘September eleventh was the first day of school, and a lot of people were late. It meant he was alone in his corner of the North Tower when the American Airlines plane hit.

‘The impact jumped his wheelchair halfway across the room. Through the window, he saw a blast of flame arcing into the sky and he knew he had to move fast or he was dead.

‘He found his evacuation chair, balanced it on his lap and headed for the emergency stairs. On the way he got drenched – the sprinklers came on and with it the lights gave out.

‘He got out into the elevator lobby, but there were no windows so it was dark. It was the building-maintenance guys who gave him a chance. A few years back, they had used glow-in-the-dark paint on the emergency doors so that in a disaster people could still find them. God knows how many lives the decision saved that day.

‘He propped open the door into Stairway A with his wheelchair and positioned his evacuation chair inside. He wasn’t a strong guy, but he transferred himself across.

‘Immobilized now, he sits in an emergency stairway inside a burning building and does the only thing he can. He waits.

‘There are three emergency staircases in the North Tower. Two are forty-four inches wide, the other is fifty-six inches. It’s a big difference – in the wide one two people can pass each other and it’s not as tight on the turns. Those turns would be critical for anyone trying to carry what is really a stretcher with a seat. As you can imagine, fate being a bitch, the paraplegic guy is on one of the narrow staircases.

‘All through the building people are deciding which way to run – towards the ground or up to the roof for a helicopter rescue. Those that go up die – the door on to the roof is locked to prevent suicides.

‘Stairway A is full of dust, smoke, people and water. Like a fast-running stream, it pours down the steps from overworked sprinklers and busted pipes. But the guy in the evacuation chair doesn’t call out, doesn’t ask for help. He just waits. For a miracle, I guess.’

Bradley paused, thinking about miracles, I suppose. For a moment, as he started speaking again, there was a tremor in his voice, but he managed to control it. ‘A long way below, some middle-aged, not very fit, guy hears about the man in the chair and starts yelling. He wants volunteers to go back up with him and help carry him down.

‘Three men step forward. Ordinary guys. They follow the middle-aged man up the stairs, pick up an end of the chair each and choose the right way – they don’t go up, they carry him down. Through the crush of people, the smoke, the water and those corners that were too fucking tight.’

He paused again. ‘They carried him down for sixty-seven floors! And you know what they found when they got to the bottom? No way out.

‘It had taken them so long that the collapse of the South Tower next door had destabilized its neighbour. Ahead of them was just fallen concrete. Behind them was the fire.’