The short walk to NYU Downtown Hospital on Beekman Street led me into the thickening dust and debris toward the direction of the World Trade Center and against the panicked flow of frightened office workers. They walked past me hand in hand, covered in ash, collectively guiding those who couldn't see and supporting those who couldn't walk on their own. It was the strangest thing I'd ever seen in my life. People wept as strangers held each other. Those who had been running slowed, many collapsing from exhaustion.

Approaching the hospital, I saw open wounds bleeding under ripped and torn clothing. Victims walked, limped, and were carried into a makeshift emergency room. Walking directly into the chaos, I found myself next to eight other volunteers who like me, had just showed up. Doctors, nurses and other medical personnel darted back and forth setting up a sort of triage, assigning victims with open wounds to one area, shock victims to another, smoke inhalation to another, eye damage over here, heart attacks over there, and scattered throughout some just plain scared people who simply needed to talk about the horror they just witnessed.

Initially the victims were mostly office workers. One woman in hysterics kept ranting about seeing one of the planes coming right at her. She didn't have a heart attack, but was obviously in shock and given oxygen. A young man in a suit stood silently waiting for a doctor. He had that thousand-mile stare. A briefcase dangled from one hand, his pant leg on the other side was torn open from mid-thigh so that it fell open revealing a massive to the bone wound down the entire length of his leg. The doctor who worked on him said he was lucky there was no major artery involved, as he would have bled to death before he got to the hospital.

As the morning became afternoon the victims coming into the hospital were primarily firemen, policemen and other emergency response people. They had broken bones, smoke inhalation, eye damage and even a few heart attacks. Without exception and regardless of their injuries, they were anxious to go back into the destruction up the street. A sense of duty outweighed any concern for personal safety.

After about three hours the number of victims slowed, allowing us to catch our breath and organize things a little. We lined up wheel chairs and readied gurneys for the next wave of victims. Wash down stations were set up in front of the hospital, even as ash continued to fall. Anticipating that the second wave of victims would likely be in worse shape than the first wave, the doctors insisted we be prepared. Within an hour, the long procession of walking wounded dwindled to none and it became hauntingly apparent there would be no second wave. Whatever horrible damage had been wrought upon the World Trade Center was complete and total.

The sadness I felt personally was profound. There was nothing else I could do at the hospital; the number of qualified medical personnel now far exceeded the wounded, so I just left. As I walked through the lobby I saw faces stunned in disbelief, looking for answers from any one coming out and in that moment I realized our world had changed.

Back outside, in front of the hospital, what had hours before been a bright clear sunny day was now a dark gray shadowy day. Fiberous dust blocked out all color except for the orange glow of fires still raging inside the Border's Bookstore in the building in front of what use to be the North tower. I stood and stared straight up Fulton Street at that image for the longest time.

The following morning, Wednesday, September 12th, I woke to an eerie silence in my lower Manhattan neighborhood just five blocks from the now collapsed World Trade Center towers. There was no rumble of fish market trucks on the cobblestones in the South Street Seaport. The hustle and bustle of Wall Street people arriving for work had been replaced by the distant roar of military jets patrolling the air space above Manhattan, giving one an odd sense of security.

There was no phone service, no Internet, no e-mail, no fax and for now no cell phone because I had used up the battery the previous night reassuring loved ones. There was no electricity, no television, no newspaper and no mail.

Outside my house, the streets were coated with an inch of undisturbed ash. The morning sun glittered off the bits still falling as though the last remnants of the once glistening towers were reluctant to give way to gravity. Looking west toward the now sadly vacant skyline, thick clouds of acrid smoke raced into the air from fires that seemed to cover many blocks between my neighborhood and Battery Park City. Then I remembered my friend Joanne, an art buyer I used to work with who lives on that side of the towers. I hadn't heard back from her since I left a message when the buildings were still just burning. I had to go there, to know what happened in Battery Park City.

So once again I checked the contents of my survival kit, charged my cell phone on the car battery, donned my facemask and rode my bike down to Battery Park past the National Guard who were just arriving there. I rode along the waterfront to the south end of Battery Park City. There, looking up the West Side highway, I caught my first sight of the devastation. It took my breath away.

Here, the ash was more than six inches deep. Pieces of paper still flew through the air and scattered over everything. Looking at any single piece gave me a sickening feeling. There were checks, written in huge amounts, financial reports, official looking letters, business cards, microfilm, bits and pieces of our economy strewn everywhere. My phone rang. Alison, a friend of mine and editor of an advertising magazine, asked me how I was doing and I could no longer keep it together. Faced with trying to articulate what I saw, I broke down and cried. I tried to explain the sight of these two buildings that used to be such an important part of so many lives, now collapsed into a smoldering pile of rubble with its paper contents spilling out for the wind to take, and its human inhabitants buried beneath twisted walls and pulverized floors.