(Newser)
– Twenty-seven hours after World Trade Center Tower 1 collapsed on September 11, 2001, Genelle Guzman McMillan was about to surrender. He was in pain, unable to move among the rubble, and with dust in his mouth and nose, unable to call for help. “I knew I wouldn’t go out,” he says. “I’m getting ready to die.” Then he heard someone say, “I took care of you. My name is Paul.” He took her hand and she took it. He remembers that Paul told him he would be fine. “I won’t let you go,” he said. Guzman McMillan has been searching for his rescue for 20 years but has not found it, Gent reports. “So we came to the conclusion that Paul really was my angel,” he says.
Guzman McMillan had moved to New York from Trinidad two years earlier and loved his job as a temporary agent for the New York and New Jersey Port Authority on the 64th floor of the tower. After hitting the tower, she and her co-workers went down the stairs and reached the 13th floor when the building collapsed. He no longer has nightmares, but still deals with the loss of his co-workers and friends. Her husband, Roger McMillan, said: “She has this kind of remorse for the survivors: ‘Why did my co-workers die and I survived?'” .
The couple married less than two months later and raised three children. “We appreciate knowing there was a 99% chance I would almost lose someone I fell in love with,” McMillan says. His wife says September 11 changed her “physically, mentally, spiritually” and strengthened her Christian faith, according to ITV. The experience does not fade. “I live with him every day of my life,” says Guzman McMillan. “I see the scars on my leg, the wounds, I see it, I live it, it’s nothing I can run away from.” But he said he doesn’t want it any other way. “I wouldn’t change it for who I am today,” says Guzman McMillan, who adds that “they gave me a new life.” There is a warning: “I’m happy to be here, but I wish the other workers were there too.” (Saturday was a day of tributes.)