'The sight was burned in your retinas forever:' ER doctor reflects on 9/11

SARASOTA, Fla. - Next Thursday marks 24 years since one of the most horrific sights in American history. 

Terrorists sent planes into the World Trade Center towers in New York and the Pentagon in D.C. 

A third hijacked plane failed to reach its target thanks to some brave souls and crashed in a field in Pennsylvania. 

Nearly 3,000 people lost their lives in the deadliest attack in U.S history. 

Sarasota doctor remembers 9/11

For a Sarasota doctor, the memories of that day remain etched in her mind. 

She and her husband were there for it and served as first responders. 

She was an ER doctor in Queens and he was an NYPD police officer. 

Dr. Stephanie Reynolds is ready to respond to any emergency that comes through the emergency room doors at HCA Florida Sarasota Doctors Hospital. 

What they're saying:

"I'm comfortable in an emergency. I find I am drawn to an emergency and if I can hold your hand or make you feel comfortable during the worst day of your life, and it’s a process for me, then that’s what I like to do," she told FOX 13. 

On September 11, 2001, she was working in Queens and had just finished her shift. 

Reynolds was on the way to meet her husband, a police officer from the NYPD's Emergency Service unit. 

They planned to take their daughter to her first day of pre-school. 

On the radio she heard a plane hit the first tower of the World Trade Center. 

"When I walked in the door, he was running out the door to his truck and kissed me and said," ‘I don’t know if I’ll see you again’ and drove into the city as the second plane hit," she recalled. 

Reynolds dropped her daughter off at school, solo. 

She clutched onto their home cordless phone. 

Minutes turned into hours, waiting for any word of her husband. 

24 years since terror attacks on 911

"In the meantime, I called the hospital, went back to see if I could help out. They were clearing out the halls, clearing out every patient so we could open up rooms. I finally heard from him at 2:30, and I knew he was okay. I called the hospital back, and they said, ‘we will need you tonight,’" she said. 

A handful of patients, covered in soot, came off the train. 

But hundreds of hospital beds sat empty. 

"I wasn’t needed because nobody came, everybody was killed. Thousands and thousands of people were killed. We had all the trauma units ready, we had bags of equipment and materials and bandages and venilators, and they just sat there. It was a sadness that they just sat there," she said. 

Over the coming days, Reynolds took her compassion from the ER to the front lines of Ground Zero. 

She worked to comfort wives, husbands and families who suffered unimaginable loss.

Many were her friends and relatives of her husband's co-workers.  

"When we got to ground zero, the smell was one you’ll never get out of your nose and the sight was burned in your retinas forever. Explaining to them there’s a chance people are alive and trying to give hope when, in the end, we realized there was no hope," said Reynolds. 

All of the men in her husband's unit, except him and his partner, were lost on 9/11. 

The compassion she carried 24-years ago has only grown stronger. 

"9/11 is a very important day and I think that people need to appreciate that our nation has made it a day of service to give back and emergency responders across the United States, whether they are physicians, nurses in emergency rooms or paramedics, EMTs and firefighters, police officers on the front line have given so much of their souls to their jobs. I think people forget," she said. 

What's next:

Reynolds will be in New York on this upcoming September 11. 

She and her husband will be attending a memorial for the officers killed in her husband's unit.