New lung or WTC cop dies

Officer stricken after months at Ground Zero

By ADAM LISBERG
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Under a jumble of gray wires and clear plastic tubes, Cesar Borja lies unconscious. A nurse checks the monitor at his bedside. The skin on his neck twitches.

Borja is in critical condition with pulmonary fibrosis, kept under sedation, unable to speak even if a breathing tube weren't in his mouth. His eyes are closed.

Beneath the medical hardware that keeps him alive, Borja, 52, still has a handsome, rugged face, topped with the short, spiky hair of a former soldier who never missed a day of work in his 20 years as a city cop.

But everything changed when the World Trade Center fell on Sept. 11, 2001. Borja, a father of three from Bayside, Queens, volunteered to work months of 16-hour shifts in the rubble, breathing in clouds of toxic dust.
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