When the first plane hit, I was parking the car. On the radio the announcer said President Bush (the younger) would be visiting an elementary school in Sarasota, Fl. I walked into the cancer center where I still work, clocked in and headed for the chemotherapy infusion room, a semi circle of recliners where our patients took their treatments. As I rounded the corner I noticed all my colleagues gathered, gaping up at the T.V. on the wall. One of them said:

“You’ll never believe this, a plane just hit the World Trade Center!”

Then as we watched, the second plane hit the second tower, and then we knew. We didn’t fully know what it was that we knew at that moment, but still, we knew. It was exactly 17 minutes.

But cancer too is a relentless enemy, and not bound by clocks or world events. There were people in all those chairs waiting to be treated and so we went to work. It was almost completely silent in the infusion room that day, where there was normally conversation and a surprising amount of laughter. Our patients, fighting for their lives, stared mutely at the constant stream of news, taking in the fate of people having a worse day than themselves. All the while we moved around them like automatons, as though it were a normal day. Stunned and numb, our hands moving by muscle memory. In between we called loved ones who were nowhere near the danger, but still you had to hear their voices.

I was starting an IV when the first bodies started to fall, sometimes killing others with their bodies as they fell to earth. I was giving chemo when the first tower fell. I I was teaching a new patient what we would be doing when the second one fell. I paused but then I got on with it. It was the strangest day I’ve ever worked. Maybe the strangest I’ve ever lived.

17 minutes. It took 17 minutes to lose our innocence, our illusion that we didn’t live in a world where this could happen. 17 minutes to learn that someone could hate you so much that would never know you. 17 minutes to know that you would have try very hard not to hate them back. 17 minutes for the world you grew up in to end and the one your children would grow up in to begin.

17 minutes.