On Monday, September 10, 2001, a nurse came to my house and drew blood from my son. The results of such test were always supposed to arrive quickly but they always took twenty-four hours. She was checking his red cell count. It had been low the previous Thursday at his regular clinic visit. I asked if his count could rise by itself and they said it was possible. This was the first time his count had been so low and, in a display of incredible stupidity, I said no to a blood transfusion.

I know, looking back, that I had a peculiarly muddled idea. I thought that if treatment was going to be a year long, then it would take a half year before my son’s blood counts dropped and needed support. He had been in treatment for five weeks, his hair had fallen out after two, my household was in chaos, and I had been unable to say Yes to One More Thing. The clinic agreed to send a nurse to our house in four days, to check his blood again. That was easier than having one sick child, one stunned mother, and three other children make an extra fifty mile drive.

Tuesday morning we were wandering around the house when a friend called and told me to check the news. Something terrible was going on in New York. I found a news channel just as the second plane struck the second tower and we watched some of the subsequent appalling footage. This was interrupted with the news that the Pentagon had been hit. The dad of one of our homeschool families worked there. We rushed over to try to help her while she waited for news. Fortunately after several hours, her husband walked in the door. I put down her baby, pried my own children loose from their friends, and got out of the way. That family needed to be with each other.

We were back home around 2 p.m. and sat down to say some prayers. After a few minutes the phone rang. It was the clinic in Washington D.C. calling to tell us that my son’s blood count had dropped even further, and he needed to come in for a transfusion STAT.

Well, we live in Virginia. The bridges over the Potomac River were closed to traffic inbound to DC. There is a long way around that would have gotten me on the right side of the river, and I thought about it. But I had gotten lost trying it once before, and I didn’t have a GPS. I thought about four children in the van, and driving around back roads to get into the city.

It’s hard to remember now how little people knew of what was going on. We knew the towers had fallen. We knew the airspace was closed. My husband was fighting his way home from seventy miles away. No one knew if there were more targets, more hostile planes. I asked the clinic if I should go to the local hospital. They did NOT like that idea, being very worried about protocol for a child with a highly compromised immune system. We discussed the closed bridges and whether we could wait one more day. They were worried about the availability of blood.

At that point that afternoon of September 11, the clinic thought all the blood in the country was going to end up in New York City. Blood is given out, first come, first served (at least then), and they were afraid that there would be none left Wednesday morning, for my son.

But my stark conclusion was, that if we were under attack, and it was going to continue, I couldn’t take four children straight into the heart of D.C.

And I spent the night wondering how much damage I had done to my son by that incredible act of cowardice, the previous Thursday.

Wednesday morning he and I were up and in the van, barreling down the road as early as I could manage. The three non-sick children stayed home with my husband. We had George Washington Parkway all to our selves with the sun shining on the river and the trees still green. I remember thinking that we would see them change, lose their leaves, and then grow green again, before we stopped making this trip.

We crossed the river at Key Bridge and on the far side were soldiers with large weapons, watching us, driving alone on the road.

I do not want to see that again in my lifetime.

They were quite kind and polite. I said we were on the way to the hospital and they glanced briefly into the van, and then waved us on when they saw the characteristic bald head. I had learned to recognize that look, the double take and the effort to keep one’s features unmoved, when suddenly confronted with mortality in a young child.

There was plenty of blood for the transfusion. Because in New York you were either safe, because of heroic people like Rick Rescorla, or dead.

I tried much harder to understand what I was being told at the clinic. The year passed and eventually, I had a healthy child again.

But I remember vividly how little we knew originally, and how terrifying it was to wonder what would happen next. It’s easy to forget or to minimize all that death, twenty-five years later. Better if we don’t.