The Day After

I don't really remember what happened the day after other than my office phones ceased to ring, their was an eerie calm about the house, the ladies living there were subdued, and the people who worked with me were glued to the tv.
I was in Birmingham, Alabama working in a homeless shelter for women and children. Far, far away from home and I didn't know what to do. The day before I had called home to make sure that everyone was safe-they were. I only knew one person in New York at the time and as far as I knew she happened not to be downtown that day.
Life at the shelter stayed that way for many days. Some of the ladies living in the house had relatives in New York and they were frantically trying to figure out if they were still alive. All the donations and money that we had been getting was being taken up to New York. The other people who worked with me didn't know what to do and the phones stayed silent for about two weeks.
There was worry across the nation that it would happen again, somewhere they didn't know. Security tightened all over the place and memorials were held in towns all across America. People were afraid to fly, yet the ones who wanted to couldn't. Everyone wanted to be home, close to their families because they didn't know what might happen in a blink of an eye.