“Give sorrow words. The grief that does not speak Whispers the o’erfraught heart and bids it break.”—William Shakespeare, MacBeth We all remember exactly where we were and what we were doing on the morning of September 11, 2001. Early that morning, I flew out of Boston to attend the ENA annual meeting in Orlando. At about the same time, Carol Flyzik, RN, CEN, an emergency nurse for 8 years at Hale Hospital in Haverhill, Mass, was also flying as part of her more recent work with a company called Meditech. My plane, like hundreds of others across the nation, was forced to land. Carol’s plane, American Airlines Flight 11, crashed into the first World Trade Center tower. After 3 hours of extraordinary kindness by the airport staff in Charleston, SC, where my plane had set down, and amidst the chaos of the horrific events unfolding that morning, we were bused to Orlando. The almost surreal 7½-hour ride provided ample time for quiet thinking. If tragedies such as this have a silver lining, it is that they are a reminder of what truly matters—our children, our families, and being a part of a helping profession with colleagues and friends you can count on. As the days and weeks have passed, possibly the most bitter frustration for emergency nurses has been the inability to help, to rescue, to do something. Emergency departments were cleared, operating rooms were emptied, but then so many patients did not come—just like in Oklahoma City. Perhaps in these extraordinary times, gratification may take a different form. One example might be emergency nurses, now important eyes and ears for our country, identifying and reporting a bioterrorism outbreak early on. In the aftermath of the tragedies, and with the constant threat of more, questions abound. What is the role of a nursing journal in a war effort, particularly such an unconventional war with such an unconventional enemy? What can our emergency nursing community do to make a difference in such perilous times? What kind of information do we need? Who can best write about it? The Journal needs your expertise and suggestions. In this issue of the Journal, we glimpse, firsthand, the horror and devastation of September 11 and its aftermath through the personal experiences of our colleagues. We are indebted to the nurses who allowed us to rush to print with their often profound experiences and insights. Rather than a comprehensive offering, we present this issue’s material as the beginning of a continuing dialogue. I’ve heard many say, referring to the hijacked planes, “Any one of us could have been in that plane.” But more importantly, the fact of the matter is that one of us was in that plane, and more than one of us was at Ground Zero. We close with this thought: The Journal of Emergency Nursing respectfully and reverently acknowledges the tragic death of our colleague, Carol Flyzik, RN, CEN, a great nurse and a strong patient advocate, and the heroism and ultimate sacrifice of our brothers and sisters in New York and Washington, DC, whose sole concern was to protect others and who worked and perished on the front lines of a New War, and a New World.