When the COVID pandemic hit, I faced my own moment of fear. Just ten months out from open-heart surgery, with three young children at home, I was considered high risk for severe complications. I questioned whether I should keep working on the front lines. The feeling of impending doom was crushing. But ultimately, I knew—I could not step away in the time of greatest need.
I still remember the first COVID patient I was assigned. My heart raced, my body tensed, and every instinct screamed with fear. I questioned my choices. And yet, I put on my PPE and went in. I did it again the next day, and the day after that—just as so many of my colleagues did, across the country and around the world.
I slept in the basement, quarantined myself from my family, and waited for the worst. Imagined fear is hardest to bear. Those first weeks did nothing to ease it. Even after a year had passed, every time I stepped into a COVID room, my chest tightened. At the time, we all thought we were going to die. But we did it.
Courage is not the absence of fear—it is choosing to act in spite of it.
“I’m not alone,” I would remind myself, thinking of the environmental services staff, techs, and aides who entered those same rooms. I thought of the military, police, and firefighters who put themselves in harm’s way every day. I identified with their courage. And while it is heroic, I know the daily toll it takes, how the stress accumulates, how it is tucked away until later.
On 9/11, I was a new intern at the Brooklyn Hospital Center. A few months into training, I was living in hospital housing with a view of the twin towers. Every morning, I would look at them and think, How lucky am I?
That morning, I turned on the TV, then looked outside to see the smoke trail from the first tower. I ran to the medical floors to discharge patients and make space for the wounded we expected. As I went, I saw the first tower collapse through a patient’s window. Then I waited in the ED. Nothing came.
Back at my apartment, colleagues not on duty were sobbing. They had seen the second tower struck and then both towers collapse while I was gone. I grabbed what I could and ran to the site.
At Ground Zero, we set up a triage area. Again, no one came. Instead of the frenzy I expected, I was met with a nightmare of silence. There were no survivors, no one to save—only firefighters with grave faces searching for their colleagues.
In the days and weeks that followed, I returned to rinse soot-filled eyes, give breathing treatments, and do what little we could to support the firefighters and other first responders.
It was a painful time in our history. Yet when I reflect, what I carry with me is not what I did, but what I missed before I arrived. The true heroes were the firefighters, police officers, and countless first responders who ran toward danger while others fled. Many never came home. Their courage, sacrifice, and selflessness will always remain with me.
And that is what I think about every year on this day: the courage of those who run into danger, the toll it takes, and the quiet sacrifices that accumulate over a lifetime.
Today, I honor all those who gave their lives on 9/11. And every day, I remain deeply grateful to the firefighters, police officers, military members, doctors, nurses, and all the behind-the-scenes staff who continue to put themselves in harm’s way to protect others—and who carry the silent burdens of that service.
We owe them not only our remembrance, but our commitment to live lives worthy of their sacrifice.
