There are plenty of stories where people are told they’re going to die, where they’re given x number of days or months to live. The stories are about what they make of those last days. 

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I don’t know what to do with my last days other than change. What else am I supposed to do when one day ago my dead brother was sent to me and told me he was disappointed in the way I was living my life? Talk about unsolicited advice.  

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***

Before:

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I took a sip of my coffee. I was sitting at the very end of the conference table in the room where some of my coworkers were presenting their new idea for our next newspaper release. We were on the eleventh floor of the World Trade Center; it was 2011, roughly 10 years since the towers fell. Sometimes I liked to imagine what I would’ve done if it were me in that situation. There was a reason I always sat at the end of the table, so that I had a clear view out the window. 

 

I think I’d jump right away, no question. I’d smell the fire and have zero hesitations. To be honest, right now if there weren’t people in this room with me, I wasn’t sure I could trust myself not to jump. 

 

I knew that I had people who needed me, but when it’d been ten years and things still hadn’t gone right for you, it made you lose hope; more than that, you lost faith. 

​

Ally and Spencer were the two editors-and-chief presenting right now. Ally was Black, and Spencer was white. They had the screen pulled down and on the screen there was a video clip of the planes hitting the twin towers. My palms got sweaty and my chest grew heavy as I watched it; it reminded me of when I had to helplessly watch it from the screen ten years ago. I remembered dividing it into three parts to make it less overwhelming at the time, so that was what I did now. The first part was the collision, then the flames and smoke, then the reactions of all the people in the towers and below. Like a movie, I didn’t have to finish it, so I usually allowed myself to look away after part two. It was the reactions, the screams, that got me. If I couldn’t even watch it virtually, how did any of the people make it through the actual thing?

 

Then I remembered: a lot of them didn’t.

​

I grabbed my pen and pretended to scribble down notes as they were talking. “It’s been a decade and we need to write a remembrance. As we’ve all learned in plenty of writing classes, we need to be respectful in writing something like this. But we also need to focus on more than just the sad parts. We’re not writing a tragedy here even though that’s what the entire country experienced. We’re writing a tragedy rebirthed as strength and unity. We’re going to need several articles. Some interviews of survivors, some simply summaries of events, some memorials of firefighters who passed—“

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My ears popped and I started seeing their lips moving, but no sound was coming out. I watched everyone watch the presentation in horrified faces. Some jaws were dropped. I wondered how many of them just felt pity and how many of them were actually grieving the people who died. 

​

I looked at the hangers of coats in the room, at the stack of the briefcases, at everyone’s identical business attire. I was in a black turtleneck and skirt. My square-rimmed glasses were at home because I knew I wouldn’t want all my vision today. 

​

It was taking everything in me not to take my pen and stab myself in the arms with it. But it wasn’t professional so I didn’t. 

​

Just like no one here would ever know what it was like being trapped in this building when it was falling to the ground, no one knew the heart attack I felt when I heard my name being called. I felt like there were slugs inside of me sucking out all of my blood but there was no way to get them out. “Harvey.” Writers here were always called by their last name first, and then when they didn’t respond fast enough, their first name was called. “Julie!”

 

“What?” I shouted.

 

“We’ve been assigning projects to all of you for the past fifteen minutes,” Spencer told me harshly, blowing a bubble with his mint gum. 

 

“What’s my assignment?” I asked. I was squeezing my forearms extremely tightly, probably permanently bruising them, to keep water from coming from my eyes. “You’re going to do a piece on faith and how it’s helped people get through this tragedy.”

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“Anything but that. Should we really do a religious piece? Not everyone is religious and I personally feel like it’s a bad idea since our readers of different religions or those who don’t have a religion at all may not want to buy the paper.”

 

“It’s already been decided,” Spencer replied, “Plus, you don’t need to be religious to have a faith.”

 

Well I wasn’t religious and I didn’t have a faith, so they could find someone else more eligible. 

 

I ran out of the room as fast as I could because the tears were coming and no amount of external pressure I placed on myself could stop them. 

​

Outside the room was an elevator. Jim, my ex-fiancé, ran out of the room to comfort me. “I thought you were doing better?” he asked.

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“I am doing better,” I said, “it’s a complete set up though. My brother and dad were taken away from me, and I’m supposed to write a piece on how 9/11 was somehow a good thing? On how their death was fate written in the stars? Fuck that. It wasn’t their time; their time was taken away from them. With that said, no Jim, I won’t do it, I refuse to write it.”

​

He grabbed my hands to stop me from pacing. “You need to go take a breather and then come back,” he whispered. Looking at the floors around us, I couldn’t believe how new they made the floors look. It was too clean; everyone here tried to pretend like everything was perfect now but it wasn’t; all the ghosts still wandered about here, trapped. Right underneath the floor surface was ash and scars from flames; it was anything but perfect. “Julie-“ He looked at my arms and all the bruises and cuts and distracted himself from whatever it was he was about to tell me. “Julie, you’re not seriously still hurting yourself, are you?”

​

“Jim, I have to. I was supposed to die. Not anyone else.”

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“A lot of people around here lost people, Julie. But it’s been 10 years! You need to move on like everyone else! This is why me and you didn’t work out.”

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“I don’t care about me and you anymore, Jim. I don’t.”

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“You don’t believe in anything anymore, do you?” he judged me.

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“Can you really blame me? I used to believe in God, granted I was more spiritual in my beliefs. I didn’t read the Bible, but I believed there was someone out there looking out for me, you know? But now, I believe the opposite. I believe there’s someone out there deliberately trying to make my life as hard as possible. So, you’re wrong. I do believe in something, just not what you and everyone else want me to believe in.”

 

“Be quieter, okay everyone is gonna hear you.” I wriggled myself out of his grip and started pacing again. “Your dad and brother were firefighters; they saved lives.”

​

“What about my life, huh?”

​

“You used to be so happy, Julie. So confident.”

​

“I’m sorry I’m not your perfect lover anymore Jim, I’m sorry. I’m not going back in there. I refuse to write about how my dad and brother are in a better place when they were in their best place here.”

​

“I’m not saying you have to believe in God, but to get through life, don’t you need some kind of meaning? Your brother and dad lived a great life. Why not at least celebrate that? Acknowledge that they touched lives while they were here. They lived a great life even if it wasn’t as long as we all wished it could’ve been. Everyone is entitled to their own beliefs. Spirituality may be the fiction, it may differ between people, but death is the cold fact. No one can escape death. You have to come to terms with it somehow. You can’t just bury the whole situation up with anger; you’ll never heal if you do that.”

 

“You don’t know that though.”

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Jim sighed. “I give up. I forget you’re a different person now. I hate leaving you by yourself though. Promise you won’t do anything stupid?”

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I grunted. “Relax, I won’t. I just won’t write that stupid article. I quit. You can go ahead and let everyone else know. I’m sure half of them will be cheering. I know half of them think I’m a nutcase as is.”

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As I walked toward the elevator, purposefully taking the more dangerous route of transportation, Jim hollered at me, “You’re not crazy Julie, just lost. But you’ll figure it out. It wasn’t your fault.”

​

His words echoed, but I ignored them. And then a series of bangs rang through my ears and the lights went out, and the elevator stopped moving.

​

The Warning:

​

I covered my head. I expected the elevator malfunctioning to turn into something like Disney’s Tower of Terror, but luckily there was no drop. There were people who died in this exact elevator. My brother could’ve rescued someone from the death trap but I would never know. 

​

Usually my imagination always thought up the worst scenarios, but in this case, I think what happened to all the innocent people was something so horrific that not even minds could imagine what it was like. 

 

I blamed Death. I blamed Myself. I blamed the Towers. I blamed the Terrorists. I blamed my brother and dad for choosing a firefighting profession. 

​

My brother was as good of a person as there was. I knew the whole ‘bad things happened to good people’ but that didn’t make it right. He always focused on his studies. He partied on weekends, but on week days and summers, he was all about putting out fires and hanging out with our grandparents; he always said that his friends were guaranteed more time than Grandma and Grandpa were, so he was making the most of the time he had left with them. Who knew they’d end up outliving him. Age really was just a number in this world. 

​

In college, I was at a low point, and he rescued me.

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***

​

The night he saved me I was on the curb of a frat house. My roommate and her friends were too cool for me and never let me join so I followed them there and decided to get drunk on my own. Under the flashing lights and sweaty bodies, a guy found me and all I could remember was making out with his entire face. At one point, my feet wouldn’t move and I was dizzy and he was the only thing holding me up. 

​

Some girls pulled him away from me, some random girls, not my roommate. “Girl,” they told me, “Let’s get you a cab.” So many bodies were dancing and screaming that no one noticed how loopy I was, no one, until we got outside and I became more conspicuous than neon green. 

​

The girls started arguing amongst each other, and I felt myself hit what I thought was the sidewalk. Until I opened my eyes and realized I was in the middle of the road, and I bumped my head on it; I didn’t feel my head, not even when I touched it. Wet blood got onto my palm, and it looked like paint, like I was doing one of those hand painting activities. The girls standing beside me became my mirror as they all pointed at my forehead. “She’s cut bad,” one of them said unsympathetically, only caring because there were other people watching them.  

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None of them knew my name, but I managed to call my brother and he came and picked me up. 

​

“I’m sorry,” I remembered telling him in the car, “If you didn’t come, they were about to call 911.”

 

He didn’t yell at me at that point because I couldn’t even register anything he was saying. 

 

But the next day he told me, “Julie, you’re too good to do stuff like that. I like to think I can kind of picture your path and your future, and it’s not this. Look, the comparison game is something I struggled so much with. There’s going to be people all around you doing things they like that you don’t like to do, convincing you to do those things just so you can feel like you’re part of something. But if you wait, you can become part of something bigger. You can find your people. But I think there’s a reason why it usually doesn’t happen until later in life. Don’t get me wrong. Alcohol and sex and all that is meant to be enjoyed, but it’s no longer fun if you lose yourself in it. I don’t want you to feel lost.” 

 

“I expected you to yell at me, not rant at me,” I joked. We were in the car and I was tightening my seat belt on my waist as tight as it would go, my eyes like a magnet that didn’t want to attract to my brother’s but that were too weak to break the magnetic bonding force. 

​

“But thanks bro,” I added, “It’s just so hard. Everyone else has boyfriends and plans and I’m just at my desk conquering homework.”

​

“You’re in extracurriculars. You help in the community,” he reminded me, “What’s to say that’s any better or worse than what other people are doing? If you don’t want to do it, don’t. There are other people like you out there. I found them, and you will too.”

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***

​

The elevator wouldn’t stop shaking, so I froze, afraid that even one wrong step would send me spiraling to my death. 

 

I thought I might’ve already been dead when I saw my brother show up next to me. “Am I dead?” I asked, my voice shaking. 

​

He didn’t answer my question. “If you really want to die, then why does this scare you, Julie? You think about dying all the time now.”

​

“I still want to die to be with you, Adam. But there’s no denying it’s a human instinct to want to stay alive. It’s my body freaking out, not me.”

​

“So you’re okay with giving up and leaving everything behind, messing with fate?”

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I shook my head. “That’s what happened when the world took you away from me. Why would you jump in that building?”

​

“It was my job,” he said firmly, no remorse in his tone. His hair was longer than I remembered, matted; it didn’t go past his ears, it was just super thick. He was in his fireman outfit that looked more green than yellow, minus the helmet and mask and all that. 

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“Is that what happens when we die? We’re stuck in the same clothes we were in when we died?”

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“I’m not here to tell you about that, Julie. Quit trying to get off topic. You did the same thing when I was alive.”

 

“You really are my brother,” I commented. 

​

“Well duh,” he joked. Only thing that didn’t make sense was that his uniform was squeaky clean; there should’ve at least been smoke marks. 

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“Why are you here?” I asked him, “Let me guess. You’re here to tell me heaven isn’t real.”

 

He shook his head. “I’m here because of what you just said. Because you’re in a dark place. This isn’t what me or dad wants for you.”

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“What?” I grunted. 

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I wanted something else to focus on but we were in a small space and I was pretty much trapped. Even the buttons on the elevator were powered off. I tried to pry the elevator doors open ten times but they wouldn’t budge. 

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“That’s what I miss the most about you,” Adam laughed, “The fact you think a bobby pin could open up an elevator.”

 

“It could,” I muttered, “Now what is the deep dark secret you have to tell me?”

 

“Julie, there’s no secret. We’re both dead, that’s why I’m here. You’re not the kind of dead I am, but you’re not the you that you were before I passed away either. Your motivation in life, your reason, your identity, are all sitting in a tombstone next to me and Dad’s stones. The difference is they can be resurrected even though I can’t.”

​

“If you guys died, who’s to say I won’t die tomorrow?”

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“You might,” he said, crossing his arms, “but you have to be okay with that.”

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“You sound like all my stupid coworkers,” I blurted, “I hate them.”

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“They’re looking out for you, Julie.”

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I sighed. “I just miss you and Dad.”

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“Dad is great!” he said, his arms flying up in hand motions, “Is that what you need to hear?”

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“You guys need to come back. I wasn’t ready. I’m still not ready.”

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“But that’s what life is, Julie. We never know what’s going to happen. That’s why we have faith that—”

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“Don’t you dare say your death means something good.”

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His words managed to make me feel closer to him than even his hugs did; he was always the perfect example of how intimacy was more than just little touches. “Look,” he said, “It’s horrible that me and Dad died, but it’s because it was our time to go. Yours isn’t over yet.”

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Interrupting him, I yelled out, weirdly noticing no echo, “But it wasn’t your time.”

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“Okay forget I said that.” He bent his eyebrows at me and gave me the same hilarious apologetic look he used to give me when Mom made him say sorry to me. “Julie, it may seem like that. I’m not saying you have to believe it happened for a reason. But you do have to believe that me and Dad didn’t die for nothing. Right?”

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“No one’s ever worded it that way,” I muttered, mainly to myself. 

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“You’ll figure this out, Julie, I know it.” As he moved around the elevator, I noticed whatever side he went on, the weight seemed to all shift that way. I felt like he was holding me even though he wasn’t. 

 

Stumbling in the small steps the little space allowed me to take, I stuttered, “But I don’t even know what I’m supposed to do. I don’t know what I wanna do with my life.”

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“You’re a writer.”

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“I don’t like writing in the same place where so many people died, Adam.”

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“I don’t mind it. I can easily watch over you that way.”

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There was a long silence, until I asked, “What’s the afterlife like?”

​

“I know I can’t get you to be okay in one conversation, but I hope I’ve given you things to think about.” That did not answer my question. 

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I grabbed his shoulder and my hand fell right through him. It felt like when I went to grab a window I thought was there but really wasn’t, like going to bat the ball only to hit air instead. “Before you go, do you think I’m a bad person?”

 

But he was already gone.

 

After:

​

The elevator repaired itself, the power coming back on, and all I could think about was how I wished I could repair myself just as easily. 

​

I kept hitting the buttons repeatedly, hoping one of them may be a rewind button that would take me back or let me start over. But all they ended up doing was taking me on a fifteen minute elevator ride, taking me on a tour of the building ten times in a row; and they made me look absolutely insane when I finally got back to the right floor and my ex-fiancé was standing outside of it, shaking his head at me. 

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It was hard to face the look he gave me. There was a look he used to give me, the look where I knew he understood me . . . and loved me. It was a slight smile he gave me, and every time I did something he looked at me and knew exactly what was going through my head. One time I fell down the stairs and came out of it with not a single scratch on me but he looked at me and knew exactly what happened, even guessed little details right like that the cause was a sock I accidentally slipped on. We used to be connected, always on the same page about everything, and it hurt looking at him now and seeing the urge in him to look away from me; I was vermin to him now.

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“Julie, are you coming back in or not? It’s your last chance.”

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“I’m coming,” I said, leaping and speed-walking past him; I didn’t get a good look at him, but I could hear the surprise in his grunt on my way back inside. 

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I didn’t go back to my chair in the conference room. I headed for the front of the room, announcing, “I’ll do it. My part.” Everyone was looking at each other, texting each other behind my back, probably asking each other something along the lines of was this an apocalypse because I was acting so out of character. I didn’t care. “I’m sorry for how I’ve been acting. I know I took 9/11 extra hard. But-“

​

I was interrupted by a giant shadow on the wall next to the window, and my gut told me to run toward it. My mind was automatically thinking of the worst case scenario. I started to understand why they said our minds liked to trick us. 

 

Right now as I was watching a plane make its way toward us, my heart wasn’t beating and I wasn’t breathing. I was sitting there watching it, hearing screams in my head again, seeing firemen getting burned to death in my head. I was taken back to people falling to their deaths and cars clogging up the streets and people on their phones and important documents blowing all over the streets. It took me back and I couldn’t move.                                     

 

I knew right then that someone or something was watching. I didn’t know specifics, but I knew whatever it was, that it was there and that I wasn’t alone. I knew that there was meaning and that it would probably take me another decade to figure it out. Whatever it was, it felt like a warm aura or energy, it was standing next to the window right in this moment; it planned for me to watch the plane go straight over our building and leave behind a smoky trail that blurred all of the window glass except for one tiny little hole that I could peek through. It planned for me to watch the plane not kill thousands of innocent people. It wanted me to see that it was here.

 

No one else in the room saw the airplane. They saw the airplane’s reflection in my eyes, saw my motivation, reason, and identity in me again finally, but they didn’t see exactly what I saw. 

 

Only I saw it.

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I didn’t see my dad or brother. I didn’t even technically see the airplane. 

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I saw Good. ​