Frantic
October, 2001
After failing to get anywhere near Ground Zero, Leo frantically started asking where the nearest hospital was. He was told that most of the 9/11 survivors were taken to The New York City Downtown Hospital. Before he rushed there, he pinned up a picture of his best friend, along with his new cell phone number, at the make-shift lost victims gathering place. Sadly, there wasn’t one single lost victim there hoping to find a family member or a friend, there were only the people looking for them.
The hospital was crowded and chaotic, two things Leo hates the very most. He tried to be patient and wait his turn in line at the reception desk, but that only lasted five minutes. He offered a hundred dollars to a nurse to take him to the rooms of every male victim of 9/11. After the ninth room, the nurse had to leave him for an emergency, but for another hundred, he let Leo search on his own. It was during my phone call with Leo, when he interrupted his recount of searching for his friend by reminding me of how shady the people are in New York, that’s when I knew, Taddeo was alive. That phone call was twenty-five days ago.
I flew in yesterday. It had been almost a month since I saw Leo, and I couldn’t take being apart from him any longer. I could also tell by the sound of his voice that, as each day went on, he’d grown increasingly more depressed about Taddeo’s condition. His best friend had been laying in a coma for nearly a month with no signs of waking anytime soon.
Leo arrived to my room shortly after I checked in last night. His face unshaven, his clothes coffee stained and wrinkled, and his eyes sunken in. He looked ten years older than the last time I saw him. We embraced for a long time and then proceeded to a light dinner where he tried to prepare me for what I was going to see the following day. After dinner, he excused himself to go and pray at the small church he found down the street from the hotel. He said, “It’s the only thing I can think of that will help him.” I declined his invitation to go because, well…after all of the sins I’ve committed, I’m afraid I’ll light on fire if I step foot inside of one of those things. I decided to contribute to Taddeo’s recovery by doing what I do best; I raided the hotel mini-bar, shook myself a martini, and begged Kelly to pull some strings. Clearly our prayers worked last night because two hours ago Leo called me at the hotel with the remarkable news that Taddeo woke up.
Apparently, a few minutes before the first plane hit the towers on 9/11, Taddeo, who recently left Goldman Sachs to start his own Hedge Fund, went to the lower level of The North Tower. He was called down to meet a very lost furniture delivery guy. Once he was down there, tragedy struck. Everyone, including Taddeo, very slowly started leaving the building and no one really panicked until they got outside and realized what had happened. Even so, it seemed like such a small hole in comparison to the size of the building and he even contemplated going back to his office to grab his laptop. When he turned to ask a police officer if he could re-enter the building, that’s when The South Tower was hit. He stayed nearby to witness the catastrophe…too close actually. When The South Tower fell, it crumbled to the ground as quickly as a Jenga game gone bad. He ran as fast as he could to avoid the debris, but knew his efforts were hopeless when it started steamrolling around him. He dove under a car and held on for dear life. Apparently, Taddeo held on good enough because finally, after nearly a month of drifting in and out of consciousness, he woke up this morning to his grateful best friend sitting beside him.
After a few minutes of gathering his surroundings and several more of doctors poking and prodding him, a very confused Taddeo finally turns to Leo and asks, “Dude, what the hell?”
“Terrorists, Man. It was really bad. The Towers are gone.”
“Holy… A lot dead?”
“Almost everyone.”
“Jesus Christ.” After absorbing the enormity of what he survived and telling Leo the story of how he did, he asks, “When did you get here?”
“Bout’ a month ago. Took the first flight out.”
“Holy shit…I’ve been out that long, huh? How do I look?”
“Like you got the shit kicked out of you.”
“So I guess I look just like I did before that building landed on me, huh?”
“Damn it, Taddeo, I am so sorry that happened. We never should’ve fought.”
“It’s all in the past. Forget about it.”
Realizing he came as close as he did to losing one of the most important people in his life, after doing one of the most foolish things in his life, Leo conceals the sorrow in his eyes with his fingertips and hangs his head low. In barely a whisper, “I don’t know what came over me, and I don’t know if I can ever forgive myself.”
And like all good best friends, Taddeo lets him off the hook.
“Love, Man. Does crazy shit to people.”
Leo’s job at Robertson Stephens, although sympathetic at first because everyone there seemed to have known someone that died on 9/11, had become tired of waiting for him to come back and gave him an ultimatum- be at work on Monday or we have to let you go. That was two weeks ago. It would’ve been a devastating blow to most guys who had worked their entire adult life toward becoming an investment banker at one of the most prominent firms in the country, but he barely felt an ounce of pain from the loss. It paled in comparison to the potential one he sat next to at the hospital every day for the last month.
By the time I arrived to the hospital this afternoon the two old friends were already joking about the fight they got into back in August. Feeling awkward about the position I put the two of them in, I excused myself almost as quickly as I got there. But, before I left the room, I put my hand on Taddeo’s and said, “I don’t ever want to get in between your friendship with Leo. You mean too much to him and he means too much to me. When you get back on your feet, we’re going to have to work something out.” And then I kissed him on the forehead. When I reached the door he said, “I think we just did.”
After I left the hospital, Leo stayed to talk to the doctors who informed him that Taddeo appeared to be out of the woods and if everything stayed the course, he could possibly resume his life within a couple of weeks and go back to work. Now, preparing for his first restful night of sleep in nearly a month, Leo’s changing into a clean white t-shirt as I talk to him from the hotel bed.
“Resume what work? His new business is blown to smithereens.”
“Yeah and so is my career at Robbie.”
Sensing he’s hinting at something, I slowly put my wine glass down on the room service tray, pull my hotel robe tighter and wait for it.
“After you left today, Taddeo talked to me about joining his Hedge Fund group. Well, technically I’d be the group because the rest of the group is dead.” After shaking off the insanity of the situation, he continues. “He’s still got an incredibly viable business, it just needs to be rebuilt and he can’t do it alone.”
Trying not to sound nervous, “Wow, sounds like quite an opportunity.”
As he walks over to rummage through his suitcase he continues to talk about the potential in what Taddeo was just starting to get off the ground, about the likelihood of making far more money than he ever could’ve made at Robbie and about his commitment to helping his best friend that he feels like he so horribly mistreated outside of The Round Up on my birthday.
“There’s just one problem, Chrissy.”
Oh, crap. Here it is. “What’s that?”
“I have to be where the big clients are…in New York.”
Fifteen years ago, I fell in love with Kurt. It was also when I fell out of love with myself by agreeing to do, say and be everything that man wanted just so he’d love me back. Four years ago, I realized how wrong it was to be that way when I sat next to Leo at Buckley’s. And, almost a year ago, I fully realized the damning effects of not being true to myself by finalizing a very painful divorce. I’m not really sure how Leo expects me to react to what he just said, but I will not be true to myself if I say I’m okay with him living in New York. We fought too hard to finally be together again and he had to make huge career moves to work in the Bay Area. Besides all of that, New York is a God awful, mean, terrorist-laden location! I feel like I need to remind him of all of that stuff. But what would that make me if I did? What does it say about me to be the only one in this relationship to question those things…to be the only one afraid of losing everything we worked so hard to get back? Does it make me true to myself or truly desperate? On top of these concerns is the promise I made to Taddeo just yesterday, where I said I wouldn’t get in the way of their friendship. All of a sudden a familiar feeling hits my stomach. I’m losing Leo…again.
“I don’t really know what to say.”
Leo turns from his suitcase, walks toward me and gently gets down on one knee. And then he hands me a beautiful black velvet box.
“Say you’ll marry me.”