On Sunday, September 9, 2001, my boyfriend and I were in NYC for the day visiting his god-son.

Before going in to the Holland Tunnel I looked up at the Towers and said how we have been up to NY so many times, but never for “sight-seeing”. After a few minutes of talking about it we decided that we would come back up on his next day off (I was unemployeed at the time); that day was September 11 and it was a definite go. We talked about just going to the Empire State Building, the Staute of Liberty and the World Trade Center (with that most likely being the 1st stop). Well we headed back home that night (9/9/01) to Pennsylvania.

Monday rolled around and I was getting prepared for our, once again, day trip to NY. My boyfriend decided to go out and get some stuff at the store. Well, on the way he ran in to someone he had problems with in his past. They got into an arguement and this guy shot my boyfriend in the knee. The bullet did NO damage; it went in, riquoched off of his kneecap and exited out by his calf muscle. Doctors couldn’t believe that his kneecap didn’t shatter. I went to the hospital to get him and we went home for the night, obviously our trip was cancelled.

The next morning, September 11th, he got up and being the stubborn man that he is, he decided he was going to go pick his daughter up and drive her to school (go figure). I got up with him and went down stairs to watch TV. He left the house about 8:20am.

When all of the special reports started coming on TV I couldn’t believe it. I called him hysterical, but he was just about home. We sat there watching TV all day in disbelief. I had visions that night, like many others, of the 2nd plane crashing into the Towers. It affected me immediately, but him it took awhile to realize what could’ve possibly happened.

Now, he gets upset even if he sees me watching something about it on TV or reading something about it. He refuses to talk about it (the events of that day) to anyone, especially me. I still get extremely upset to this day like it just happened yesterday. I think what if…..
The thing that my (now) husband said though on the night he was shot (9/10) chills me, but I still hear it in my head almost every day, he said “It’s better to be among the living than the dead…”

Thank you for allowing me to share my story.