Sporting Boone

Lauren Manning ran out of the North Tower while her body was still on fire. Burns covered 82.5 percent of her body. Doctors believed she had a 90 to 95 percent chance of dying, while her 10-month-old son was waiting at home for a mother who might never return. She had not even reached her office yet. That delay may have saved her life. Manning was a partner at Cantor Fitzgerald, whose offices occupied the upper floors of the North Tower. On the morning of September 11, 2001, she was running late and entered the lobby just as American Airlines Flight 11 struck the building. High above her, all 658 Cantor Fitzgerald employees who were at work that morning would die. Then the fire reached Lauren. Jet fuel and flames blasted down the elevator shafts. The doors exploded outward, and a wall of fire engulfed her. Her clothes caught fire. Her hair burned. Her skin began burning across most of her body. Lauren did not wait for someone to rescue her. She ran. Still on fire, she somehow made it out of the North Tower and across the street. A stranger eventually reached her and put out the flames. The damage was catastrophic. Burns covered 82.5 percent of Lauren's body, most of them third-degree. Some were so deep that they damaged muscle and bone. Her lungs had also been injured by smoke and fuel inhalation. At NewYork-Presbyterian's burn center, doctors estimated that her chance of dying was between 90 and 95 percent. Lauren understood enough to know how serious her condition was. But before heavy sedation took over, she made a decision. She had her husband, Greg. And she had Tyler, her 10-month-old baby boy. Greg later wrote that while Lauren was at St. Vincent's Hospital, she told him she had decided to live for Tyler and for him. Then the real fight began. Lauren was placed into an induced coma for almost two months. Her lungs collapsed. Severe infections threatened her life. Doctors performed one operation after another, including skin grafts, procedures on her joints, and partial amputations of her fingers. During that initial hospitalization, she underwent 11 major surgeries, many of them involving multiple procedures. There were days when simply staying alive was the only goal. Her husband stayed beside her. He talked to her even when she could not respond. He read poetry to her and told her about Tyler. Friends and relatives constantly wanted to know whether Lauren was still alive, so Greg began sending email updates. He signed every one the same way: "Love, Greg & Lauren." Lauren was fighting for her life while the full scale of September 11 was still being kept from her. When she eventually regained consciousness, she did not immediately understand everything that had happened. Only later did she learn that both towers had collapsed and that 658 of her Cantor Fitzgerald colleagues had been killed. Then another frightening question entered her mind. Would Tyler recognize her? The mother who had left home on September 11 no longer looked the same. Her hands were badly damaged. Her body was covered with grafted and scarred skin. She had been unconscious for weeks and could barely move. But Tyler was still there. So Lauren began learning how to live again. Sixty-six days after the attacks, she walked approximately 30 to 40 feet from her hospital room toward the nurses' station. Her physical therapists were so stunned by how far she had managed to go that they ran to get her parents. People on the burn ward cried as they watched her standing there. Those few feet were only the beginning. Lauren spent more than six months in the hospital, and her recovery continued for years. More procedures followed. The pain never simply disappeared. Even two decades later, she described living with ongoing pain, fragile skin, infections, and complications caused by her injuries. But September 11 had not taken away what she had been fighting for. She went home. She raised Tyler. Later, she had another son.