Sept. 11th

It came down to fight or flight for me when my friend's life was on the line.

Illustration by Sean Ford

It wasn’t until the cloud of smoke came around the corner, raging toward us, that I thought of Rufus. I had just seen the south tower fall from outside my apartment, two blocks away, in Battery Park City. Until that point, I hadn’t worried about him because he was safely tucked in my apartment, away from planes flying into buildings and people falling from the sky.

But I had to run, and the thought of running away from my home without my beloved Rufus was unfathomable. I couldn’t imagine life without him. As my legs defied my heart and took me away from the smoke (which I thought was fire), I cried for the first time that day, thinking that he was going to die alone.

Rufus was a gentle dog whose front legs were shorter than his back, lending him a kind of strut as he walked. His floppy ears, soft grey fur and white markings on his chest and paws made it seem as though he was wearing a tuxedo. He’d been abandoned twice before I adopted him, and the thought of him…