Poisoned by 9/11, Killed by the Coronavirus
For 17 years, Victoria Burton and Mike Hankins spent September 11 the same way: just the two of them, at home, with no set schedule. Maybe they’d watch the reading of the names of the dead for a bit. Occasionally, flipping through the channels, they’d linger on a program that was replaying news coverage from the attacks. But mostly they’d just be with each other.
The anniversary was always a weird day to process. He’d been a fire marshal and she’d been a crime-scene detective. They’d seen awful things working on the pile, identifying body parts, sometimes just by a gory shred still attached to a piece of equipment. But the wreckage was also where they met. They soon started dating, and felt as if they’d found their soulmate.
If not for the attacks, they probably wouldn’t have ended up together. If not for the
