NYU Downtown Hospital Staff Honored for 9/11 Work They were eating cupcakes and joking in the cafeteria where, six months ago, stretchers lined the room and the injured of Sept. 11 first came to be treated. Outside, in the patio, children played in the very spot that had served as a makeshift triage center for needing treatment for bruises and cuts to unspeakable burns.   It was the afternoon of March 11 at NYU Downtown Hospital, where nurses, doctors, orderlies and technicians gathered to be honored for their work on Sept. 11. Without phones, and power coming from emergency generators, the staff treated more than 500 victims, including 150 emergency personnel. Hospital workers also escorted more than 200 people to safety, and made home visits to elderly residents and Southbridge Towers. The injured began coming in around 11 a.m., recalls Mariana Colon, an intensive care unit nurse. Then, sadly, "it was dead. We were just waiting. Waiting." In his speech honoring the hospital workers, Rep. Jarrold Nadler announced that Congress had just appropriated an additional $840,000 toward a new trauma center that the hospital wants to build. Nadler said that after the Trade Center's bombing in 1993 he had talked up the hospital and its need for a state of the art emergency room. Last year, $723,000 was appropriated. "You may have hurt your cause," Nadler quipped, "by performing so well without one."