Genelle Guzman-McMillian was a Port Authority worker, on the job for only nine months, working on the 64th floor of one of the WTC towers on September 11, 2001 when she felt the building shake and heard the noise of the first impact.
A look out the window showed papers floating in the sky, but it was not clear what happened until she saw news reports on a TV in a conference room.
Eventually, she and the other remaining fourteen workers were evacuated and began walking down those stairs, only encountering a single fireman on the way up.
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She had walked down to the 13th-floor stairs with her circle of co-workers and paused to remove her 4-inch-high heels when the building collapsed, pinning and trapping her for 27 hours under concrete, steel, and dead bodies.
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McMillan's head was pinned between two pieces of concrete, her legs sandwiched by pieces of a stairway.
Her toes had gone numb hours before. Her right hand was pinned under her leg. Only her left hand was free.
For hours, she reached upward with that free hand into the blackness and dust, pushing and twisting her fingers into the small spaces between steel and concrete.
She tried tapping. She tried calling out, but with the dust and inadequate amount of air, her voice was barely a whisper.
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And so she waited. And while she waited, she had a long talk with her God.
The pain was excruciating and one moment, Genelle said that she felt she just needed to talk to God.
"I said, please God. Just give me a second chance. I promise, I promise that I will do Your will, God."
"Show me that you're listening," she said. "Show me that you're here."
That's when she felt a hand. It was a hand on her shoulder that said, "I'm right here. I'm not going to leave you." Genelle said the person asked her name and she asked his back.
The name of the stranger behind the voice "Paul." Since her head was pinned, she could not turn around to look at Paul, all she could do was hear his voice. But when she was finally pulled from the wreckage, "Paul" was nowhere to be found.
No one can really explain why Genelle Guzman McMillan lived and so many others did not.
There is no logic as to why McMillan lived and others did not. No science explains why she did not slip into unconsciousness and die in silence.
McMillan was not stronger or smarter than those who died. She did not have special training about how to cope when buried by a 110-story skyscraper.
She did not even have an especially loud voice to call for help through the knotted steel and jumbled concrete that fell around her.
Only one explanation really makes sense: If you believe in miracles, McMillan's survival was just that...a miracle.
"I believe in miracles. I believe in second chances," explains Guzman. "I also believe that adversity is a bridge to having a closer, deeper relationship with God. It's not about what I want, it's about what Jesus Christ wants from me."
"There is a God. He is real."
