London – Crouched on the floor to avoid the thick black smoke filling her train, Lisa Levine held her head in her hands, still shaking from the explosion. All around her stunned passengers asked what could have happened?

But it was no mystery to the American nurse who lost a childhood friend in the Twin Towers. “I knew instantly it was a bomb that had gone off,” said Levine. “I just knew.”

“I had flashbacks of 9/11. I kept saying to myself, ‘Oh my God! I can’t believe this is all happening again.’”

Only a few weeks from the attacks, the sharp 38 year-old medical professional still fights back tears as she tells her story.

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“I was on the Circle Line getting ready to pull into Edgware Road,” she recalls. “We were side by side with another train coming in the opposite direction.”

“Suddenly we heard a loud explosion and saw a flash of light. It felt like it was right beside me,” her voice breaks. “Both trains just stopped and the lights went out.”

“You could hear screaming coming from the other train,” she said. “The windows were blown out and both trains started to fill with smoke.”

It became harder and harder to breathe. Coughing, Lisa and the other passengers sat on the floor gasping for fresh air.

“It wasn’t completely pitch black, you could still see,” recalls Lisa. Emergency lights had gone on in the tunnel.

Smoke was pouring out of the other train only a half meter across from her. People were standing by broken windows trying to breathe.

Glass and bits of debris stuck to their bodies and soot blackened their faces and clothes. Dazed, some stumbled off the bombed train and began walking away down the darkened tunnel towards the light and safety of the Edgware Road Station.

Lisa still sat, fighting panic, listening to the screams of the injured.

In a few minutes somebody rushed in from the car ahead and asked, “Are there any medical personnel on board? People on the other train need help.”

Lisa Levine stood up and said, “I’m a nurse.”

“I put my fear aside and didn’t think about it again until I got out of the subway.”

Accompanied by a nursing student named Trish, Lisa climbed down into the shadowy space between the trains.

The back door of the damaged subway car was twisted and could only be opened a crack.

Lisa Levine said she will never forget the horror of looking inside.

The car had been torn apart like tissue paper. “The doors facing my train had been completely blown off,” she described in a hollow voice. “There was a big hole in the center of the car where someone had fallen through.” Even the roof was torn open.

“There was a lot of blood,” said Levine, “Through the six inch crack, I counted six dead and seven injured.”

There was a woman lying on the floor in front of the door. She was terribly injured but still breathing.

“We just couldn’t get to her,” she said in voice breaking with emotion. “We tried to explain to somebody how to give her CPR. He tried so hard, but it didn’t help.”

One of the terror victims told her that they could get inside through a broken window on Lisa’s train and they made their way to the spot. “The window was lined up with doors that had been blown off.”

Jumping over shards of glass, Lisa Levine leapt into the bombed out train car.

“It never once dawned on me that there might be another bomb on that train and that I might die,” said Levine. “My biggest fear was that I would not be able to reach people in time to help.”

Inside the blasted train, shocked and bleeding passengers were still sitting in their seats.

“Everybody had severe lacerations and broken bones,” says Levine. “There was a lot of blood. It was just devastating. Really horrific.”

Among the first people Lisa helped were the two American sisters from Tennessee, Katie and Emily Benton. They were bleeding from shrapnel wounds.

From her background as a nurse, Lisa knew the most important thing to do was to stop the bleeding and bring the bomb victims’ blood pressure back up.

“An uninjured man named Andrew took off his shirt and we tore it up to make bandages and tourniquets,” said Levine.

She went through the train helping who she could and leaving those beyond help.

“There was one lady screaming in severe agony,” remembers Lisa. “The bomb had broken her leg or knee. People were trying to get her off the train which was just causing more trauma. We told them to stop and wait for the paramedics.”

“Another guy’s leg was broken in many places. He was not doing too well. He kept saying, ‘I’m going to faint! I’m going to faint!’ So we got him down on the floor with his head lower so he wouldn’t drop his blood pressure.”

“Also on the floor was a theater producer named David who had pretty bad wounds to his legs.”

“Everybody was really in a daze,” said Levine. “Shock was definitely settling into all these people.”

And around the still living were the corpses of those who had not survived.

“There was the body of a man on the floor, his legs had been blown off. There were a couple of other people who were dead around the hole in the center of the train. I think I counted six.”

“By the time I got around to the lady we had seen before through the door, she was gone,” said Levine. “She had the look of death.”

Then Lisa came across the body that still haunts her.

“There was a guy…I could make out his body and torso, but I couldn’t find his head. And I remember he was wearing what looked like a blue jacket.”

“It’s really hot here now in London. Why would he be wearing a jacket?”

“Instantly, I had this thought, ‘I wonder if you are the S.O.B. who caused this whole thing? It was just something in my gut.”

“I almost lifted up his jacket to see if he had anything strapped to him, but then I thought I shouldn’t tamper with what might be evidence.”

Lisa left the bomber’s body for the police and went back to attend his victims.

“I was just trying to make sure that the people who were alive were going to stay that way,” she said. “I didn’t want anybody else to die.”

“But there wasn’t a lot we could do. We had no I.V. fluids, no bandages, nothing we could clean their wounds with. We didn’t even have gloves.”

Lisa sat and talked with the wounded to keep them awake. There was a real danger of the victims going into fatal shock.

Finally teams of paramedics arrived. “I don’t really know how much time passed,” said Lisa. “It felt like a long time before they finally got to us.”

“I don’t recall seeing any police, but there were a lot of paramedics and fire-fighters.”

Precious minutes that could mean the difference between life and death were saved because Lisa could direct the paramedics to the people in the most immediate danger.

Everybody needed attention,” said Levine, “but you had to prioritize the ones whose bleeding needed to be controlled right away.”

“No one did anything for the people who were dead, they focused their energies on the living.”

Once the paramedics had everything under control, Lisa climbed out of the torn and blackened train car and began to make her way towards Edgware Road station.

Inside the Underground tunnels dim emergency lights barely provided enough light to avoid stumbling over the tracks. Shadowy figures moved in the haze left over from the smoke.

Injured passengers were sitting along the tracks bleeding through bandages applied by paramedics. Frightened and disoriented commuters shuffled towards the light of the Tube Station.

Walking amongst the other dazed and confused travelers, Lisa came out into the brightness of the station and climbed up onto the platform.

Police told her to immediately go up the stairs and enter the triage center at the Marks and Spencer store on the corner.

Inside the vast shopping complex, emergency personnel were patching up the less seriously hurt and loading the badly wounded into ambulances.

In a bitter irony, the very reason Lisa Levine came to London was to help local hospitals update their computer systems with the very latest nursing software and technologies.

She would never have guessed that those hospitals would be using her updates to treat victims of terrorism.

Police walked among the crowd taking names and numbers. “We kept waiting for somebody to come by and get our story, but nobody did.”

Finally, Lisa decided she had to get moving. “I just couldn’t sit there anymore.”

Lisa left with two other people and started walking down Edgware Road.

The horror of what she had witnessed finally set in. “I was hysterical. I couldn’t even talk.”

“We all needed some coffee so we stopped at a Starbucks. People looked at us like we were crazy. Here we were all dressed for work and covered in soot.”

By the time they left the coffee shop, the news had reached Londoners. The streets were now filled with people afraid to ride the Underground or buses.

All three tried to reach their loved ones on their cell phones to let them know they were alright. “The local lines were jammed, but I was able to call out internationally.”

“I got hold of my brother in Florida and told him to tell my parents I was OK. I reached my best friend in North Carolina who couldn’t understand why I was calling her so early in the morning on her vacation. I told her I didn’t want her to worry about me, and when she turns on the news she’ll understand why.”

Lisa decided to keep walking until she got to her office in Covenant Gardens. But it was no easy task.

“I have only been her since January,” explained Levine who was working in London on a six month contract. “And I rely upon the Tube for everything. I don’t know how to get anywhere above ground.”

When Lisa finally arrived at her office, she was soon told that the government was instructing everyone to go home.

The tired and shaken American set out again on the London streets, but this time one of her friends went with her, afraid to leave Lisa alone after her ordeal.

“We were avoiding all the major roads,” remembers Lisa. “We had no idea what to expect, so we thought that was probably our best bet.”

When she finally reached her flat, her friend Emily fixed her chicken soup and Lisa Levine took a much needed bath. With the aid a few pills to help her sleep, Lisa closed her eyes on the whole ordeal and put it firmly behind her.

Or so she thought.

Like many Londoners Lisa has shied away from the Tube. “I walk to work every day now, or take my bike,” she said. After one week Lisa worked up the courage to get back on the Underground.

Then two weeks to the day, another bombing. This one, thankfully, was bungled and had no casualties, but the aborted attack brought all the fear rushing back.

“It makes it hard to move on when nothing changes,” she says. “I have flashbacks of people on the train…the people I couldn’t help.”

“There are times when something will just trigger it,” says Levine. “I spent most of this last Saturday crying.”

Now, after two bombing in two weeks, Levine has decided to shorten her time working in London and go back to the United States a bit sooner than first planned.

But the tough American who put her life on the line to help her new neighbors is more angry than anything else. “Enough already. I’m really pissed off.”

“The guy who blew up my train was a teacher! I don’t understand how people can have so little regard for life, even their own.”

“What do I think about the terrorists? I hope they rot in hell.”

- The End -
By Lance Laytner
Copyright Meritum Media
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