Yellow and Blue Make Green

        Twain was right about the truth. Strange things happen in life, and according to my late mother-in-law, they happen for a reason. I don’t know where you stand on the cosmic universe and where we all fit in it, but the following story will make you question the moving parts of the past, present, and future. It’s my story only because I believe it to be, but it may be yours as well because life is one big game of connecting the dots. Maybe we passed each other in our dreams, and you unknowingly saved my life and I yours.

              It was weeks after September 11, 2001. I was a New York State Trooper in my prime. A different man with different ideas than those I believe now. I was deployed to New York City to help with the chaos that had enveloped southern Manhattan. It was no longer a search and rescue effort when I arrived. Amongst those picking through the rubble, choking on the poisoned air, and watching the canine handlers break down as their cadaver dogs did their job, we all knew it was search and recovery.

              There are three things I remember most about my time spent on a security post less than fifty yards from Ground Zero. The first was anger. It’s an anger that infects the brain’s rational thought process when you see the level of destruction humans are capable of. Watching dump trucks haul away the mountain of destruction under which lie fathers, mothers, sons, and daughters corrupts the soul. I think it stole the last remnant of childhood innocence I had left.

              That anger eventually left me, but it was replaced with something worse. Shame. I was embarrassed to be a part of a species that refuses to learn from its mistakes and kills in the name of God. The next thing I’ll always remember was the West Side Highway, which was dubbed Hero’s Highway. It was the main thoroughfare for first responder vehicles getting to and from Ground Zero. People lined the sidewalks holding signs and cheering every time a firetruck, police cruiser or ambulance drove by. They were tireless with their support and on one occasion I almost cried. I was making a run to our command post at the Jacob Javits Center at three in the morning. The sidewalks were empty except for one lady sitting on a lawn chair at the corner of thirty-first street. My Blue and Gold went by, and she stood from her lawn chair and screamed, “Thank you for being here, Staties.”, as she held up a poster that read, THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR YOUR SERVICE. These people were like angels sent from above when you started thinking all was lost.

              The last thing that will never leave me is a strange incident that will challenge what you think you know about the universe. I was at my security post with two other troopers. Only authorized vehicles and pedestrians who lived on that city street were allowed past our check point. Most of the residents had left downtown, but a few refused to leave. We got to know these residents, and they offered the use of their bathrooms and often brought food to our checkpoint. One of these residents was an old-timer who would go for his morning and afternoon walks without fail. He always went by with a polite wave, but that was all. Then there was the day he pointed at me and waved me over.

I made my way over to him and asked, “What can I do for you, Sir?”

With a smile he said, “You’re green.”

“Are you asking if I’m a new police officer?”

“No, you are green. I’ve never seen a green one before.”

“I don’t think I understand.”

“Occasionally I see people with a color that surrounds them. I’ve only seen two colors before. Yellow and blue. The yellows are the unlucky ones. They all eventually met with violent ends. Car crashes mostly. Two died right here when the Towers came down. One was a murder. The blues are all still alive except for a friend of mine from kindergarten.”

As you can imagine I was at a loss for words. I assumed the old man was having a senior moment and I wanted to be polite. The only thing I could come up with was, “You know that yellow and blue make green.”

“You jest, but you are on to something.”

“Excuse me?”

“I know you think I’m a silly, old man babbling gibberish, but I want you to consider what I am saying. If a yellow dies violently and a blue lives to old age, what do you make of a green?” Before I could answer he continued. “It means that a violent action could lead to a long life. At least that’s what I think. I’ve never seen a green before so that’s what it must mean.”

That’s when I heard a voice approaching. “Dad, Dad, leave these guys alone. Dad, these guys are working and don’t need you to jabber on. I’m sorry, Officer.”

The man was the spitting image of the old man minus the wrinkles and with more hair. I said, “Please, don’t worry. He was just telling me about colors.”

He closed his eyes and sighed. “Dad, I thought we spoke about this.”

“I know, but he is the first green I have ever seen.”

His son said, “It’s always been yellow or blue. You know what, never mind. I’m sure he doesn’t want to hear what color you think he is or what it means.”

“Your dad sees colors around people?”

“Not everyone and only on rare occasions.”

“And the colors mean something?”

“My dad thinks they do, but that’s his theory and his theory alone. I will say that he has never seen a green.”

“He gave me his theory on what green means.”

“Please pay my father no mind.”

I looked back at the old man and said, “No worries. I feel honored that I am the only green he has ever seen.”

“C’mon, Dad, let’s go.”

The old man gave me a knowing wink and off they went. I was more amused than confused and forgot about the conversation until my last day on the security post. The old-timer was out for his morning walk and waved me over again. I approached with a smile and said, “How’s it going?”

“My son gave me strict instructions not to bother you guys, but I wanted to give you something.” He went into his pocket and pulled out a piece of metal. It was a mangled piece of rebar. It was about six inches total, with one end curled into a bloated, warped hook. He placed it up against my chest. I barely felt it because of my Kevlar vest. Under normal circumstances a police officer would never allow this, but I did not feel threatened, nor did I want to upset him. He continued, “I find bits and pieces of the devastation on my walks. They say there is debris as far north as midtown. A reminder of your time here, and a worse reminder of what we are capable of.”

I gently took the cool metal from the old man’s hand and said, “It makes you think, doesn’t it?”

“I don’t know why, but I felt compelled to give that to you. I just found it and as soon as I picked it up, I thought of the police officer bathed in green light. I instantly thought you would take this to heart.”

“Is that why you pressed it up against my chest?”

“I don’t know why I did that. Maybe, it just felt like I should.”

“Am I still surrounded by that green light?”

“You are, and when I held that piece of metal up to your chest the green glowed brighter.”

“Now that you have had time to think about what the green might mean, do you still believe what you told me the other day?”

“I think so.”

“Why could it not mean that a person who lives a long life results in a violent action. Maybe I will get old and make a bad decision at the wheel and cause a car crash. Same logic, just the opposite of what you are saying.”

“I prefer the positive outcome.”

“How is it positive if I benefit from violence?”

He nodded his head toward Ground Zero. “Will anything positive happen from this wreckage?”

The question caught me off guard. This old-timer was not having a senior moment, nor was he suffering from any brain diseases as far as I could tell. “I hate to admit this, but I don’t think anything positive can come out of this.”

“That would be a bigger tragedy than what happened on the eleventh. Thanks for your service. We’ve all felt safer with you guys being around.” He patted me on the shoulder and walked away.

I looked at the piece of rebar and grinned. I put it in my pocket. When I got home, I thought about throwing it away. The old man was right. It was a reminder of what humans were, but should not be, capable of. I put it in my top drawer and forgot about it for over two decades. As it turns out, the old-timer was right about other things.

Anybody who was at Ground Zero shortly after the Towers came crashing down and was unfortunate enough to breathe in the toxic aftermath, was entitled to enroll in the World Trade Center Health Program. The evil gift that kept on giving has resulted in thousands of people developing health problems. We are entitled to a free health screening once a year. They check your breathing, mental well-being, and draw blood and take a urine sample. Every other year you get a chest x-ray. For a decade I have been using these tests as my yearly physical.

I’m not what you would call a “doctor” person. I have great admiration for doctors, but it is a well-known fact that the body cures ninety percent of all ailments. I was a firm believer that those in touch with their bodies know when something is wrong. I no longer hold a firm position on this theory. Once I hit my forties, I made it a habit to run twenty-five miles a week and try to eat healthily. A perfect set of circumstances came along, including covid, that put my chest x-ray off for five years. This was not concerning because I knew my lungs were in pretty good shape.

When I was finally able to resume my chest x-rays, I received a concerning letter in the mail. It STRONGLY recommended I contact a cardiologist as soon as possible. I considered this a gentle nudge. I was not going to mess around when it came to my ticker. What I did not know was that a Bruce Lee kick to the onions was weeks away.

I made an appointment and a battery of tests later I was waiting for my cardiologist in his office. He walked in reading my file. After a few seconds he picked his head up and looked at me. “You need surgery, Mr. Williams.”

Bruce Lee got a running start on this kick. This was the last thing I expected to hear. I said, “When you say surgery, you mean surgery on my heart?”

“Yes.”

“Like open-heart surgery?”

“Yes.”

“Like gut me from neck to bellybutton and crack my chest open and start moving things around.”

“That’s something you will have to discuss with your surgeon. You have what’s known as an ascending aortic aneurism. It was caused by a birth defect. Most people are born with three leaflets that carry blood through the aorta. Two of yours were fused together, meaning you only had two. For your entire life your heart has been working harder to get blood to your body. This extra work has caused your aorta to thicken as any muscle does with excessive use. This is one of the few times this is not good for you. We start monitoring aneurisms when they get close to four centimeters. We recommend surgery at five centimeters. Yours is almost at six.”

To say my head was spinning did not even begin to describe how I felt. I noticed my hands clenching the armrests of the chair I was seated in. I relaxed my grip and took a deep breath. Without going into boring detail about how I found a surgeon, I decided on a doctor in Lenox Hill hospital. He was going over my MRI where they pump dye into you and said, “Yeah, brother, that valve is shot.” Anyone that candid could use his magic fingers on me any day. He was going over the results with me on a computer screen pointing out where the irreversible damage was. He was tracing the screen with a pen, and I was looking at something I had seen before.

Sometimes the thin threads that bind us to reality are easily broken. We slip into the ether and breathe in sanity. These moments of irrational sobriety bring us to a precipice, where our feet stand on the soil of ignorance. We can take that leap of faith into the great unknown or stay with our feet planted firmly on deadly ground. When I got home from my meeting with the surgeon I went to my top drawer. There was a part of me surprised to see it still there, and not something I had dreamed about. Memories sometimes mingle with fiction when perception is motivated by self-deception. The mangled piece of rebar. I held it up in front of me. Six cylindrical inches with six centimeters defiled by an act of violence. It was as if I was holding my damaged aorta in my hand. Impossible.

In May of 2023 I had my surgery. I had what is known as the Ross Procedure. They replaced my aorta with my pulmonary valve. They replaced my pulmonary valve with that of a cadaver. The operation took eight hours and another two for my heart to start beating on its own again. I was in the hospital for seven days, four in ICU. The recovery process was slow and painful. They use metal twist ties to put your chest back in place. It takes a while for the sternum to fuse back together. Try not to sneeze for a month after this procedure.  

An ascending aortic aneurism is known as the widow-maker. For the most part it has no symptoms. You go out for a jog one day and it bursts. If you are not jogging by a hospital when it bursts you are dead. There is no way I make my fifty-fifth birthday (next year) without the World Trade Center Health Program. Understanding that means wrapping your head around the worst terrorist attack on American soil is the reason I am alive. The birth defect that was a sleeper cell in my body never got a chance to blow up my aorta because of a chest x-ray meant to examine my lungs. Nothing about any of this is fair or makes any sense except what the old-timer said. A tragedy is when nothing good comes out of something bad. I can’t help but think of Megan Kanka, a seven-year-old angel whose parents made sure she did not die in vain. Her law has saved countless children, some who are adults now, oblivious to the fact that they have not met violent ends due to her death.

I’m trying to put this whole thing together. I consider myself a survivor of the 2,996 people who perished on September 11^th, 2001. I have 2,996 angels that I must thank but can’t. That brings us to the old-timer and his colors. He sounds more like a character in a Stephen King novel than an old guy I crossed paths with in New York City. I don’t even know the first name of the prognosticator of my life. He was a cameo in my life, but certain cameos have been known to be epic roles. The guy with the cup in his hand that you step over on the subway, or the cabdriver working a second job that you tip an extra buck to may mean more to our lives than we think they do. Let’s not forget that we are cameos in thousands of lives. Why not be an epic one?