Here is the story of one of the more severly injured of the victims, who is struggling to recover from burns over 90% of her body. If you have any tears left, prepare to shed them.

Read the story at: [url]http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nyt/20011017/ts/a_fireball_a_prayer_to_die_then_a_hard_battle_to_live_1.html[/url]

[size=4][b]a Prayer to Die, Then a Hard Battle to Live[/b][/size=4]
[i]LESLIE EATON The New York Times[/i]

Lauren Manning, a Cantor Fitzgerald employee critically burned during the Sept. 11 attacks, vowed that day to fight to live, for her husband and son's sake.
   
This is the story of a woman who decided to live. No one knows yet if she will.

Her name is Lauren Manning, and on the morning of Sept. 11 she had just walked into the north tower of the World Trade Center when the first plane hit. She was engulfed in a fireball.

"I heard a whistling sound and I was on fire," she told her husband, Greg, when he found her at St. Vincent's Manhattan Hospital that morning. "I prayed to die. Then I decided to live, for Tyler and for you." Tyler is their 11-month-old son.

The terrible calculus of the catastrophe at the trade center seems to have divided the people there into two neat categories: the thousands who escaped with their lives (and their nightmares) and the thousands who did not. But there is a small third group, the gravely injured, for whom the road from ground zero will be very long, if they get to walk it at all.

Mrs. Manning is a member of that group. She was transferred to the burn unit at New York Presbyterian Hospital. She was among 17 victims of the attack, all of whom had burns over 14 percent to 90 percent of their bodies; she was among the most seriously injured. Five of the others have died. Three have been released. Others have been taken off the critical list. And seven, including Mrs. Manning, remain in a deep, drug- induced sleep while doctors tend to their wounds.

Her doctors would not talk, even in the broadest terms, about the treatment that she and the other patients were receiving. But the hospital confirmed that generally, a patient's chance of survival is roughly equivalent to the percentage of the body that is not burned. Age also plays a role; Mrs. Manning is 40 and extremely fit.

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Infection is a constant threat, and patients who survive face multiple skin grafts and months, even years, of physical therapy.

Some of those who are close to Mrs. Manning are reluctant to talk about her, because she has always been a very private person. "I suspect she knew far more about me than I knew about her," said an old friend, Harvey E. Rand. But he decided to talk about her, a woman he described as "a ray of sunshine," because, he said, "maybe more people will pray for her."

Her husband, Gregory P. Manning, said he wished his wife could speak for herself. But he wants to pay tribute to her strength and courage, and to bear witness to the enormity of the injury that was done to her. "She deserves it," he said simply.

And whether she wants it or not, Lauren Manning has become a symbol of hope for Cantor Fitzgerald, the bond-trading firm where she works. The firm lost 700 employees in the trade center disaster. Others were severely hurt, including one in the burn unit with Mrs. Manning who died over the weekend.

"There are 700 families who would give anything in the world for their loved one to be where Lauren is," said Howard W. Lutnick, the president of Cantor Fitzgerald, whose brother died in the collapse of the twin towers.

[b]She's got to pull through, because she's got 700 families' worth of love," he said. "It's not fair, but she's part of their hope."[/b]

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Eric The(TheDesireForPaybackRisesWithEachSuchStory)Hun[>]:)]

Whenever the arabs report numbers of civilians lost during the bombings....I think about these people and the ones who may never be found....