Police in bomb gear appeared on the streets. I wanted to help, to volunteer, to run in and get people out. I had training. I used to be an Emergency Medical Technician in New Jersey. My license had lapsed, but I had the training. I needed to help.

"If you want to help," they told me, "leave now.… Get the fuck out of here!"

 .  .  . The Empire State Building was evacuated quickly and I watched pedestrians walk many blocks out of their way to avoid the famous edifice that defines New York City's heritage. It was the only building now with the height and significance, that just hours before had counterbalanced the most awesome and recognizable skyline in the history of the nation.

 .  .  . Uptown was like a different country. The traffic moved along. The shops were open where people continued, seemingly unaffected or trapped in the banalities of their daily reality, serving bagels, making pizzas, selling magazines. I overheard a woman complaining that the subway wasn't running. A couple discussed the disaster downtown with calm irreverence, as if it were ten thousand miles away.

 .  .  .  I met up with my girlfriend Rachel at her boss's apartment. After some minutes of fake pleasantries and livingroom chat about the terrible attack, I heard the news mention the need for blood donors and jumped at the opportunity to leave and to help the victims in any way possible. This apartment suddenly disgusted me with a new intensity as these people just sat around in their lofty West Side tower watching the events on CNN. I could have beaten someone senseless just then.

 .  .  .  Squeezing Rachel's hand desperately, we finally made it to the sanctuary of fresh air and set out walking through Central Park to an East Side hospital to give blood. About halfway through, along an ambling walkway with shady trees and acres of grass, large rocks with woods and a baseball diamond in the distance, we paused to sit on a park bench. The flood of emotion finally overcame me, and I sobbed uncontrollably in her arms.

 .  .  .  The only times during the week when I didn't feel ill were the moments I spent downtown when I saw people being nice to each other. Signs in restaurant windows invited rescue workers to eat for free. In the bars, firemen attempting to check out with an alcohol escort were met with sincere hugs and cheers and free drinks by the patrons.

 .  .  . In front of Saint Vincent's Hospital the administrators were no longer accepting non-monetary donations, unless you were O-negative blood type. I drew out the large bills from my wallet and for a moment I thought of going to the bank and drawing out the entirety of my small savings account. When a Salvation Army truck pulled up beside the emergency room entrance, folks started filling it with all manner of clothing, water bottles, food and medical supplies. I went to a nearby pharmacy and cleared their shelf of sterile gauze pads to donate.

 .  .  . I listened briefly to a delirious woman who had lost her husband. She ushered into my mind a new wave of remorse. I was deeply depressed for several blocks, walking as if in a trance, alone, staring at the cement or right through passersby as if they didn't exist. I suddenly cared nothing for the unspoken rules of sidewalk etiquette, walked clumsily, bumping shoulders or making others move out of the way. I heard two separate groups become noticeably solemn at the sight of me. I was sure they thought me to be a family member of a victim. For some reason I wanted them to.

 .  .  .  About two blocks ahead of me, a man stumbled and fell flat on his face. People surrounded him on the sidewalk and someone flagged down an ambulance that happened to be passing. The ambulance team checked the man's vital signs. He clenched a cell phone in his right hand that the EMT had to pry away. The afflicted man appeared to me to have overdosed. He was shabbily dressed and dirty, like a street bum. But he also looked like a regular guy who had maybe binged too far and now wore the appearance of a bum. I overheard someone say she had seen the man babbling incoherently and crying into the cell phone about a missing woman just before he collapsed.

(Jeffrey Selin is a novelist and freelance journalist currently living in Portland, Oregon, where he writes and plays in the mountains everyday.)

[* The title for these excerpts has been graciously lent from Linda Lerner's poem, "Haywire", which appeared in her chapbook, Greatest Hits 1989-2002, published by Pudding House. —Eds.]