A Cardiologist’s 9/11 Story
The morgue was inside Brooks Brothers. I was standing at the corner of Church and Dey, right next to the rubble of the World Trade Center, when a policeman shouted that doctors were needed at the menswear emporium inside the building at One Liberty Plaza. Bodies were piling up there, he said, and another makeshift morgue on the other side of the rubble had just closed. I volunteered and set off down the debris-strewn street.
It was the day after the attack. The smoke and stench of burning plastic were even stronger than on Tuesday. The street was muddy, and because I was stupidly wearing clogs, the mud soaked my socks.
I arrived at the building. In the lobby, exhausted firefighters and their German shepherds were sitting on the floor amid broken glass. A soldier stood at the entrance to the store, where a crowd of policemen hovered. “No one is allowed in the morgue except doctors,” he shouted.
I entered reluctantly through a dark curtain. Cadavers had always made me feel queasy, ever since those dog days in the anatomy lab in St. Louis. In the near corner was a small group of doctors and nurses, and next to them was an empty plastic stretcher. Behind the group was a wooden table where a nurse and two medical students were sitting grim-faced, looking like some sort of macabre tribunal. Brooks Brothers shirts were neatly folded in cubbyholes in the wall. They were covered in grime, but you could still make out the reds and oranges and yellows. In the far corner, next to what looked like a blown-out door, was a pile of orange body bags, about 20 of them. Soldiers were standing guard. In the store’s dressing room were stacks of unused body bags.
The group was discussing the protocol for how to handle the bodies. A young female doctor said that she didn’t think anyone should sign any forms, lest someone think that we had certified the contents of the bags, which we were not qualified to do. That, she said, was up to the medical examiner. Someone asked whether a separate body bag was needed for