Donovan Cowan – painfully burned over half his body – willed himself to walk down 84 flights of stairs during the World Trade Center attack.
“I kept saying, ‘only 60 floors to go, only 50 floors to go,'” he said as he became the final trade center victim released yesterday from the New York-Presbyterian Weill Cornell Burn Center.
“Knowing I had my family behind me gave me the will to survive,” said a weeping Cowan, 34, who has battled third-degree burns and severe smoke-inhalation injuries – and clung to life even when doctors feared he wouldn’t make it.
“I took it day by day, but there was never a moment I wanted to give up,” he said.
Sitting in a wheelchair and surrounded by his family, Cowan spoke to the press before being transferred to The Burke Rehabilitation Hospital in White Plains for more treatment.
Cowan, of Flatbush, worked as an accountant for Fiduciary Trust, on the 97th floor of the south tower.
After the first plane hit the north tower, he started to leave the south tower but turned back when an intercom announcement claimed there was no danger.
He was caught in an elevator on the 84th floor when the second plane struck. Burned and terrified as thick smoke billowed everywhere, he was forced to rush to a broken window and stick his head out to breathe.
Then, despite his severe injuries, he battled his way downstairs.
“I consider myself lucky,” Cowan said. “I heard so many of my friends died.”
Doctors initially gave Cowan only a 20 percent chance of survival.
“When you damage the lungs and you damage the skin, the likelihood that you will die goes up significantly,” said his doctor, Greg Bauer.
“His recovery is a miracle. I am honored to have looked after him.”
Cowan received four skin grafts and nearly died of kidney failure and smoke-inhalation injuries to his lungs and heart.
Cowan’s mother, Jasmine, and brothers John and Michael have been at his bedside for the past five months, reading the Bible, making jokes and keeping his spirits up.
Now Cowan, a keen soft-ball player who lost 40 pounds during his ordeal, is desperate to finish his recovery in White Plains, get back to work, go running again – and drink a cherry Slurpee, he said.
A total of 18 World Trade Center victims were treated at Weill, with 12 surviving.