80 % burns, 100 % courage

Manning’s struggle to stay alive was captured by her husband, Greg, 45, in e-mail advisories that he sent to friends and family during her treatment—messages that became the basis for a best-selling book, ‘‘Love, Greg & Lauren’’. She has been the subject of articles in The New York Times and appeared with Greg on ‘‘The Oprah Winfrey Show’’. During rehabilitation Lauren was visited by Hillary Clinton.

High-profile as her story has been, Lauren Manning knows—despite the love of her husband and son, Tyler, nearly 2, and the expertise of medical personnel—that recovery is mostly a solitary enterprise. ‘‘I have a job to do, and I am going to do it,’’ she said. She is hard at work: therapy, exercise, whatever it takes to retrieve a normal life after an unspeakable aftermath. As she says: ‘‘This wasn’t a burn from a barbecue.’’

Manning wears Jobst compression garments—support stockings for the legs, upper body, arms and hands—because pressure on her skin grafts helps them heal properly. In conversation, she presents her right ear; a portion of the left is missing—burned away in the attack (but likely to be reconstructed.) The tips of her left index and middle fingers were amputated, although their absence is barely noticeable through the open ends of her gloves.

On the way back from therapy, Manning sometimes passes the site where the twin towers stood until they collapsed. When she goes onto her little balcony to water the dahlias and petunias and the potato vine, Manning has a straight shot downtown of what people for a year have been calling Ground Zero. It was on the same balcony that Greg Manning stood, horrified, on the morning of Sept 11 and watched the towers burn. Friends and family called immediately. ‘‘I could not say whether Lauren was alive,’’ Greg wrote in his book. ‘‘I was almost certain she was dead.’’

Manning anticipates at least eight more operations, to improve her hands, to smooth the scars and rough spots. ‘‘I mourn the fact that I don’t look like I did on the morning before I went to the office,’’ she said. But she refuses to be sentimental about herself. ‘‘What happened is a lousy thing,’’ she said. ‘‘I wish it hadn’t.’’

She described herself as ‘‘a casualty of war’’. But she said she hopes there will be less hatred in the world—that parties hostile to the US will see the futility of their ways and that Americans will take care not to lump terrorist factions with peace-loving peoples.

(Courtesy The Indian Express’s exclusive arrangement with the Los Angeles Times-Washington Post service)