It was the white noise of the helicopter blades slicing through the air — not the incessant emergency vehicle sirens — that tipped me off that something was wrong.
In New York, the chaos — the wailing of an ambulance, the incessant honking of the horns — is so commonplace that it becomes an unnoticed, repeating chorus. Which is why when I heard the sounds of fire engines and cop cars while sitting on the 14th floor of my co-working space in midtown Manhattan, I didn’t think much of them. Last week, there had been some sort of festival on the street with live singing that went on for an hour. This was, I thought, the soundtrack of the city.
It was already past 6:30 p.m., but I just needed one more hour of focus to wrap up a project for a client. I was in a designated “Quiet” space where people aren’t allowed to talk aloud. There were about five of us sitting there plowing through our work. But every 10 minutes or so, people from other rooms on the floor would gather behind me to look out a window and mumble to each other softly. After about half an hour, I decided to pack up and go home because the distraction was too much.
Then, the helicopters flew in. Something was wrong.
By 7 p.m., I slid my laptop into my backpack, took a few last sips of my mango tea and headed to the main area of the co-working space to toss my trash. That’s when I started to catch snippets of full-voiced conversations.
