Telling Jane Doe’s story      
‘Dateline NBC’ producer shares emotional journey from 9-11  
By Bob Gilmartin
REPORTER'S NOTEBOOK
NBC NEWS        

Aug. 31 — On September 11, I found myself at NYU Downtown Hospital, the
hospital closest to Ground Zero. The hospital had given me access inside the
Intensive Care Unit where I documented with a handheld camera, the incredible
efforts of the hospital staff to save those closest to death. Little did I know
that Debbie Mardenfeld, a.k.a. “Jane Doe #1,” was in one of those rooms,
the curtain drawn, her life  hanging in the balance.

     I FIRST MET DEBBIE three days later when I stopped by
the hospital to see if there were any updates. The update was that some of the
patients in the unit had died, but others including this beautiful, young
Manhattan resident had lived.

       Her story was indeed incredible as doctors relayed it to me. She was
the hospital’s first Jane Doe (identity unknown) patient. Doctors told me
Debbie’s legs had been rebuilt after nearly being severed during the attacks.
When they found out her identity, doctors learned she was a 30-year-old
American Express employee engaged to be married.

       During emergency surgery, the doctors considered a double
amputation. However, they saved her legs. With the success of their
12-hour surgery, doctors hoped Debbie would be able to dance at her
own wedding. Out of the madness of September 11, it was a story almost
too good to be true. But as time went on, we would realize that it would
not have a simple, fairytale ending.              

       Doctors asked me if I wanted to interview Debbie. Of course, I said.
Debbie was obviously on pain killers when we interviewed her and months later,
Debbie didn’t remember our first meeting other than the story which she later
saw on tape. In her room, she was lying on a special bed filled with a sand
interior. The bed would help heal the horrific wounds to her backside. Besides
the trauma to her legs, the flesh on her backside from her waist to just above
her knees had been torn off by an airplane engine rotor that fell from the
tower.

       The doctors introduced us. I was talking to her while holding my
handheld camera. Debbie was smiling and holding on to her favorite stuffed
animal. Speaking in a low, gravely voice, she spoke of love, her love for the
doctors who saved her life and her love for her fiancé, Greg St. John who was
so relieved to know she had survived. She was obviously someone who loved life,
and said she felt blessed having survived her near fatal injuries. It was easy
to tell Debbie spoke easily when it came to her emotions.

       As I interviewed her, there were times when I had to choke back my
emotions. Debbie was just one of a thousand stories of loss that day. Yet,
doctors gave her back her life and her legs. I could feel everyone, including
myself, investing our own emotions in her and her story. If she could survive,
maybe we all could.
       
       
A SOURCE OF HOPE

       There was not much hope circulating during the days that followed
September 11. If Debbie’s story could have a happy ending, maybe there could
be more happy endings for the rest of us, who felt our world had collapsed
along with the Towers. As Tom Brokaw said after our first story aired on Sept.
16, “We all needed that story right now.”

       [On a personal note, just a few weeks before September 11, my wife,
Charmian Gilmartin (also a Dateline producer) and I had learned we would have a
baby. What kind of world would we be bringing him into. Maybe Debbie proved the
point that life can, and should go on.]        

               I left Debbie in her I.C.U. bed that afternoon, and wouldn’t see
her again for eight months. As I would soon learn, those eight months would be
hell for her. Early optimism for a quick recovery and release were crushed by
infections, surgeries and depression. Every time I asked if I could see Debbie
or update her story, the answer from the hospital was no. Neither she nor her
fiancé could deal with that. The first priority for them was for Debbie to get
better.

       I finally saw her just before my son was born in April. She had been
transferred to Rusk Rehabilitation Center. Debbie had not been out of a bed
since the day she went to work on the day of the attacks.

       She agreed to allow us back into her life, to follow her recovery,
but was concerned with how it would all work out. Debbie, who never holds back,
told us there would be times when she’d tell us to get lost, times when
she’d say don’t come, but she bravely said let’s see, give it a try.
It’s difficult watching someone you like going through so much pain. That was
what our first few months together were like. You would privately cheer when
she did something well and wince when she let out a blood curdling yell.

       Because I couldn’t go everyday, I asked Dateline’s Rayner
Ramirez to help out with the shooting. Debbie, didn’t take too easily to new
people during those difficult times, and said she had concerns. Soon, however,
they became best of friends, and teamed up against me, the old guy.
       
       
‘MY CHEERLEADERS’

       Something very profound happened during this time. Doctors and
nurses privately told us that once we taping Debbie, it seemed to have an
effect on her rehabilitation. They said they had seen a remarkable difference
in her. It’s not that she was performing for the camera. No one in that
amount of pain would even think of it. But doctors said she was pushing herself
more than ever.

                       Months later, Debbie confirmed that we had meant a lot to her
recovery. “My cheerleaders,” she called us. In more than 25 years in the
business, that comment meant more to me than any award, or any compliment a
boss had ever paid.

       June 11, nine months after the attacks, was an incredible day. That
was the day Debbie stood for the first time on her broken, but mending legs.

       It’s hard to shoot with a camera and choke back tears at the same
time, but that’s what it was like that day. Debbie broke down in gratitude to
her therapist, Jessica Heaney. All the rest of us broke down in gratitude that
perhaps we had witnessed a breakthrough and that she would literally take the
next step and walk.

       Two weeks later was another magical day. We saw Debbie make one
halting movement of a leg that was nearly amputated. She had taken a step. She
had pushed one foot forward, and shortly after that she would push her feet
three steps more. It was in her blood, it seemed, for Debbie to constantly push
herself. Pushing, however, had its consequences, like the day we saw blood on
the floor underneath her. It was coming from her still open wounds.
       
       
THE OTHER VICTIM

       Soon, progress came at a lightning speed: 10, 20, 50 steps at a
time. During the summer months, there would be a wheelchair ride outside the
hospital, and finally a date with her fiancé Greg for a few hours outside the
hospital.              

               Greg, the quiet athlete, was always there for her. The first thing
people would ask me while I was doing my update would be: “The boyfriend,
he’s still with her?” Yes, I would say, and they would say, “Wow, what a
guy!”

       It was not always that simple, however. During times when I talked
to Greg privately, I began to learn the pain he was in, too. Greg would never
complain, but he would remind me privately in his own practical way that we
shouldn’t feel the battle had been won.

       Physically and emotionally, he said, Debbie had a long way to go. He
might have been the only one to really know just how far. Once the camera went
away, and once the doctors and nurses would leave, it would be just him and
Debbie talking. She had so many doubts, so many concerns and was still in so
much pain.

       Greg is a serious racing bike rider. One of those guys you see in
Central Park anonymously whizzing by in his helmet and lycra pants. He’s an
urban warrior who speaks little but you just know there’s a lot going on in
his brain (a scientist’s brain, no less). Greg does not wear his emotions on
his sleeve. When we finally sat down with him for an on-camera interview, it
turned out to be the most painful and emotional one we did for Debbie’s
story. Greg, a stoic, broke down after one or two questions. From the
beginning, he was never the one who wanted to do news coverage, feeling it was
more of a distraction to Debbie’s recovery.

       His emotions were so raw, that for a moment, our correspondent, Sara
James, had a hard time keeping her own emotions in check as she asked him about
the morning of September 11, when Debbie left for work. The interview felt like
it was the first time Greg had been able to open up and talk about what he had
been through.
               
A NEW CHAPTER

       The day of Debbie’s release from the hospital was such a happy
day, and again such a tear-jerker for everyone as well. To see her walk out of
the hospital using a just a cane and an arm on Greg for support was
wonderful.

       I said to her in the ambulance van that was taking her home,
“it’s been an amazing journey.” Her response, “glad you could be a part
of it.”

       And so was I. Debbie’s story was by far one of the most touching I
had ever experienced. In many ways, her story was a place where I tried to
invest my own hopes and dreams for a better future. Her story was good for
those of us who needed something positive to latch on to, but at times that
turned out to be a bad thing for Debbie as well.                        

       It turns out, too many of us had made her a poster child of hope for
September 11 survivors. We wanted only the best for her, and that meant during
those early days, tons of mail and gifts from well-wishers who had seen our
first story. There were offers of help with her wedding plans, free vacations,
offers to come to her room and pray with her. It was too much for her and Greg
to deal with when all they could concentrate on was her survival. However,
Debbie says one gift she couldn’t turn down was a promise from Vera Wang to
do her wedding gown and bridal dresses for free.

       Right now what Debbie and Greg say they need most is a chance to
regain their lives as much as they can, and to be left alone. She told us that
besides dancing at her wedding, the nicest feeling she could have would be to
walk down the street, window shop and no one would know what had happened to
her. She said, “I think I could be satisfied, honestly, blending into the
crowd of Manhattan.”

       Debbie just wants to go back to being another anonymous, hip New
Yorker, with a life at home that includes Greg, a family and their dreams.

       It has been a remarkable journey for me, having met and lived with
Debbie’s story for the last two years. Now it’s time to let her heal and be
left alone. Hopefully she knows the “cheerleaders,” Rayner, Sara and I will
always be there for her.

       I’m sure all of us look forward to hearing that the wedding day is
on, and that perhaps we would have the honor of witnessing that extraordinary
moment when Debbie Mardenfeld and Greg St. John dance their first dance
together, and become just another young, happily married couple.
       
       Bob Gilmartin is a producer at “Dateline NBC.”
 

People 10/1/01

Here's a quote of one of the victims, from People magazine. pg 34
"Debbie Mardenfeld, 30. Facing amputation, she got a reprieve from
determined surgeons. ...falling debris had ripped the flesh from
the back of the American Express administrator's torso, sheared her
left heel and shattered her legs...Doctors warn that Mardenfeld still
faces the danger of infection in coming weeks But if she survives, 
with luck she will be able to walk again -- and dance at her
wedding to Greg S. John next year. Dr. Gerald Ginsberg, NYU Downtown's
director of plastic surgery is optimistic. The day after the blast,
he says, Mardenfeld grabbed a tablet and wrote, "So doc, my butt is
smaller?' Says Ginsberg: 'She has the attitude to get through
this.'"