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trouble was limited to her immediate vicinity, which psychologists call the “illusion of centrality”:
     
When you’re in trauma, the mind says, this is a very local problem. This is your little world, and everything outside is fine. It can’t afford to say that everything outside is horrible. The sound that I heard on the seventy-third floor should have told me, this is bad. The feeling of the building shaking should have told me, this is bad. The explosion when I was on the forty-fourth floor: bad. The smell of debris in the lower stairways: bad. Yet in every single moment, I made it my little world here. And nothing else exists.
     
    But on 9/11, when she looked out the windows of the Trade Center lobby, Zedeño could no longer suspend disbelief. Pay close attention to what happened next, as she walked toward the front doors, staring at the bodies lying motionless on the plaza. It is the story of how the human mind processes overwhelming peril:
     
I’m slowing down because I’m starting to realize I’m not just looking at debris. My mind says, “It’s the wrong color.” That was the first thing. Then I start saying, “It’s the wrong shape.” Over and over in my mind: “It’s the wrong shape.” It was like I was trying to keep the information out. My eyes were not allowing me to understand. I couldn’t afford it. So I was like, “No, it can’t be.” Then when I finally realized what it meant to see the wrong color, the wrong shape, that’s when I realized, I’m seeing bodies. That’s when I froze.
     
    “Freezing” is as common as fleeing in the repertoire of human disaster responses. But it’s also a fascinating, complicated response. It has meant certain death for many thousands of people over the centuries. Zedeño, however, had a personal savior.
    Just then, a woman—a stranger—appeared at Zedeño’s side and linked arms with her. The woman said: “We’re getting out of here.” Zedeño looked down at the woman’s arm. She still remembers the woman’s dark skin tone, similar to her own, and the red sleeve of her shirt. And then, Zedeño stopped being able to see altogether. “Because of the smoke?” I ask her. “No, no, no. There was no smoke there. I didn’t see anything at all.”
    Zedeño went temporarily blind at that moment. When she describes this remarkable occurrence now, she does it matter-of-factly. She was not frightened when this happened, she says. Just numb. She relied on hearing—and this woman in red, who began to pull her toward the doors. As they walked, the woman talked and talked. Zedeño can’t remember a word she said. “It’s funny how I tuned out everything she said. But she kept talking, she never shut up,” she says, laughing. “It was so weird! She never shut up.” But when the two of them got outside, Zedeño did hear her say, “Look, we made it.” In response, Zedeño remembers saying: “Yeah, we’re outside.” But in fact she still couldn’t see anything. She never saw the woman’s face.
    At that moment, Zedeño heard a new sound. It was a rumbling, and it was close by. It was 9: 59 A.M . At the time, she thought, “It’s another airplane.” Three notions passed through her mind in rapid sequence: “Airplane, war, a building is coming down.” With that, she screamed—either out loud or in her head, she can’t remember which—“Inside!” Her vision returned, just when she needed it again. This time, there was no denial. She turned and saw the revolving door of Five World Trade, with Borders bookstore on her right. And she ran through the door. She never saw the woman in red again.
    “The only thing I remember is the sound getting louder behind me, and I felt a strong wind. And when I felt the wind rushing right through me, I remember thinking, ‘I’m not going to outrun this. It’s too late. I can’t run fast enough.’” As the other tower—Tower 2—collapsed like a locomotive running into the ground, the force knocked