PROFESSIONAL ISSUES

Lessons they carry: Memories of terrorism's aftershocks

On 9/11, first-year medical students in New York volunteered at the city morgue. A new books tells their story.

By Damon Adams, AMNews staff. Sept. 12, 2005.

Eunice Kang, MD, had two weeks of medical school behind her when terror struck New York City on Sept. 11, 2001. Initially, her main concern was for a cousin who worked in one of the World Trade Center towers.

She cried and her classmates tried to calm her down. But she soon found out that her cousin made it safely from the building, after being in the stairwell on the 10th floor when the building was hit.

For Dr. Kang, the worst part was not knowing what happened to her cousin. Though she was new to medicine, she thought volunteering at the city medical examiner's office would help others find out what happened to their loved ones.

Her story is part of Being There, a collection of photos and interviews with students from the New York University School of Medicine who helped out at the medical examiner's morgue.

"I didn't do it to learn medicine or anatomy," said Dr. Kang, now a resident at NYU Medical Center. "I did it to feel a little more human after that experience. It was one concrete thing we could do to actually help."

Medical students, many in school less than a month, came from NYU and other schools to take part in the gruesome task of identifying the remains of victims. They mostly worked as scribes, taking notes as medical examiners, police and other officials sorted through body parts taken to the morgue.

Some students recall the faces of dead firemen and other victims who were brought in. Others remember the smell. Some said they would never look at death the same way again.

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