Lauren Manning’s handshake is strong, almost bionic. You might think it was a byproduct of decades of playing tennis and golf. But her grip has been painfully relearned, and bolstered with more titanium pins than she cares to count.
On a hot summer day, she wore flirtatiously high-heeled sandals, creased white trousers and a long-sleeved blue blouse, leaving only feet and hands exposed. So much of her skin is still stippled with scars. “My tattoos,” she said with a rueful smile, as though they were an indelible remnant of a carefree youth. Only in her case, she noted, they cannot be “lasered off.”
On Sept. 11, 2001, Mrs. Manning ”” newly married, the mother of a 10-month-old boy, at the top of her profession on Wall Street ”” was met by a fireball as she strode into the lobby of the World Trade Center.
On a day that New York City hospitals waited to be overwhelmed by casualties, only to realize that most people either perished in the collapse of the twin towers or streamed out into the holocaust of ashes largely intact, she was among the oft-forgotten few who were severely injured yet survived.
In the face of 3,000 dead, it was easy to overlook the relative handful of people like Mrs. Manning, who was burned over 80 percent of her body and spent weeks on the brink of death, then months at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital.
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Maimed on 9/11, Trying to Be Whole Again
Lauren Manning’s handshake is strong, almost bionic. You might think it was a byproduct of decades of playing tennis and golf. But her grip has been painfully relearned, and bolstered with more titanium pins than she cares to count.
On a hot summer day, she wore flirtatiously high-heeled sandals, creased white trousers and a long-sleeved blue blouse, leaving only feet and hands exposed. So much of her skin is still stippled with scars. “My tattoos,” she said with a rueful smile, as though they were an indelible remnant of a carefree youth. Only in her case, she noted, they cannot be “lasered off.”
On Sept. 11, 2001, Mrs. Manning ”” newly married, the mother of a 10-month-old boy, at the top of her profession on Wall Street ”” was met by a fireball as she strode into the lobby of the World Trade Center.
On a day that New York City hospitals waited to be overwhelmed by casualties, only to realize that most people either perished in the collapse of the twin towers or streamed out into the holocaust of ashes largely intact, she was among the oft-forgotten few who were severely injured yet survived.
In the face of 3,000 dead, it was easy to overlook the relative handful of people like Mrs. Manning, who was burned over 80 percent of her body and spent weeks on the brink of death, then months at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital.
Read it all.