Chapter Fourteen

"You're perfectly safe..."

I walk a short distance down the hall to the bank of elevators. The door of car one opens. I step in and punch the button for the fifth floor. Leaning back against the handrail, I watch the floor numbers light up as we pass each floor. I straighten up, expecting the elevator to slow as we pass floor four. It doesn’t. It doesn’t even stop. I pass floor five and then the car lurches to a stop. The door doesn’t open.

I am puzzled, but not alarmed.

I push the button marked for opening the doors. Nothing. I refuse to believe what is happening. I check again for some way to open the doors. I place my fingers on the doors, trying to see if I can pry them open. Nothing.

I push buttons for other floors, trying to make the elevator move. Nothing.

I don’t have time for this, I complain silently to myself. This cannot be happening! No one knows where I am! Rick is due back any minute. The nursing station on Lee’s floor doesn’t know where I am. Cell phone use in the hospital is discouraged, so I don’t have mine with me.

I push the red alarm button. Nothing. I push it again and in my indignation I hold it down a long time. Suddenly I hear a woman’s voice asking if I am okay.

“NO!” I respond. “This elevator is struck and I can’t get out.” She tells me she will report it, and leaves.

I wait. And wait. It seems like a long time, but probably was only minutes. I rail against machinery over which I have no power, but which has absolute power over me. I think about all the stress I have been under since May, how my world as I knew it has changed so completely.

I am working myself into a state of extreme anxiety, and I force myself to calm down by controlling my breathing and taking deep breaths. I talk to myself quite severely, telling myself to calm down. I feel tears sting my eyes. This is all too much.

I read the emergency instructions on the call box: “Push button to call.” I push the button and hear phone call tones. A woman’ voice answers. I push the button and talk to her. When I release the button, I hear the phone ring signals again.

This happens again and again, and I become even more frustrated with the inability to make a connection. After many failed attempts, it dawns on me that maybe I don’t have to hold the button down to talk.

That works and finally I am able to communicate with the hospital operator. I explain and she says she will notify maintenance.

I wait some more. I think about being tomorrow’s headlines: “Woman Killed in Hospital Elevator Crash”. The tears sting again. I don’t want to be tomorrow’s headlines. Who will take care of Lee?

I think about the earthquake in 1964, about the three teen-age boys I interviewed afterwards who had bounced into the J.C. Penney’s elevator. Suddenly the lights went out, the elevator lurched, and they were trapped for some time. How they thought they had caused it all. I have never been comfortable in elevators. Worse, since the earthquake, I have never liked being off the ground floor of any building.

I do some more deep-breathing exercises. I can feel pressure building in my neck. My head starts to pound. My left arm aches, as does the center of my chest.

I call the operator again. She connects me to maintenance.

“You’re perfectly safe,” the maintenance man assures me.

“Safe?” I cry. “I’m in a machine that’s already failed once!”

That’s what machines do--they fail. I learn that there is no one on-site who can get me out of this elevator. They have to call the Otis company and have a serviceman come over. When I ask how long that will take, he responds, “About twenty minutes."

Again he assures me I am safe and I tell him I don’t feel safe at all.

Twenty minutes. Right. It’s Christmas Eve afternoon and there’s a blizzard building outside. Yeah, right, twenty minutes. I am furious.

I am also working myself into another state. I could have a heart attack right here in this elevator surrounded by a hospital and nobody could get to me to save me. More deep breathing. More stern lectures. I call the operator again. I apologize for it. She assures me it’s fine and says I can call to talk anytime I want. I feel silly, like a child, and I tell her I’m okay, but ask if she will call the fifth floor nurse’s station and let them know that I am being held captive by an elevator. It's a pitiful stab at humor in a situation I don't find humorous.

By this time I am sure the nurses are peeved with me. Lee’s discharge papers were written some time ago, and they probably think I am out lollygagging around town, Christmas shopping or something equally as inappropriate.

No, I’m stuck in an elevator between the sixth and seventh floors. I wait. I sit. I stand. I think about how silly it would be to try to save myself in a falling elevator by jumping into the air at the last instant, thus avoiding the sudden crashing stop at the bottom. Ridiculous, I think. How would I even know when that last instant is?

More deep-breathing. More stinging tears. Someday, I think, I will be able to tell this story and find it humorous. After enough time has gone by. I hope.

Suddenly the car shakes and drops an inch. I grab on to the handrails. Headlines, here I come! What a way to get my name in the paper.

“What’s going on,” I blurt out loud.

“It’s okay, ma’am,” comes a male voice from on top of the car. “I’m just lowering the elevator so I can get you out.”

Why didn’t he warn me, tell me he was there?

Inch by lurching inch the car drops. The serviceman tells me he is going to open the doors, but to be careful when I get out because the car might not be level with the floor.

Slowly the doors inch apart and I can see the car is about six inches above floor level. I stare at the widening opening, and when I think it’s wide enough to get through I....freeze. Should I creep out slowly? Should I make a flying leap? I calm myself, try to think myself as light as possible, and walk out, step down onto solid floor. Into the arms of....nobody!

There is no one there. No Kleenex. No hugs. No apologies for the aggravation. No expressions of concern.

Nothing.

And that is the part I find the most infuriating. Not the imprecise call box instructions. Not the failure to have an on site release plan. But having no one to meet me as I escape from the jaws of certain death? I was stunned---and far from being in control of myself. I am on an unfamiliar floor, and walk around trying to find someone who can tell me where the stairs are.

I notice a clock and see that it is a few minutes after two. I have been in that elevator for an hour and twenty minutes.

***