Fifteenth Floor-Down the Rabbit Hole

My clinic has to deliver all the blood samples collected for the week to Barts Hospital for analysis. And it's a Wednesday that we have Joyce, one of the nurses under my directive, assigned to this task. she's on honeymoon leave for a few weeks, and so I decided to take the first run over.

This evening is nice, no rain for once, and I walk to the hospital to deliver the precious goods.
The lab closes at five, and I make it my business to be there before then.

Entering the building, I step into an elevator and to the topmost floor of the hospital.
Fourteen!

I'm alone the whole time on the trip up.

The door opens, and I blink and blink again.
The door doesn't close, but that's not the most baffling thing.

What is in front of me is disorienting, no actually, it's terrifying.

I automatically shuffle backward, bumping hard into the back wall, to behold a swirling billowy blue mist.
No hall, no lab.
No floor.
Just this mass of blue cloud-like swirls.

Something must be wrong with my eyesight, and I knuckle-rub them, but the fluttery blue still exists.

In the midst of the haze a shadow, and a man steps through.
Solid.
Tall, slender, dressed in a suit.
His facial features, however, blurred.

He's standing-- in mid-air!
Nothing under him!
Nothing around him but that damn cloud!

He's holding a violin and lifts it to place under his chin.
And plays 'Debussy's Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun.'
I know it well.
My mother is a pianist and has always loved the classics.

Shaking my head, I can't resist the urge to pinch my arm.
It must be the pizza I had eaten the night before.

I crane my head up to locate the elevator number board, and all are dark except one.
Fifteenth floor!
That's impossible!
Barts has no fifteenth floor!
Only fourteen!
I know! I've been in this building for years. Fourteen! That's the highest it runs before the roof.

Pressing the lit fourteenth-floor elevator button, the door shuts, opening to reveal the familiar receptionist desk.
On the fourteenth floor!

I catch my breath and think it's all a delusion. A result of working too hard--maybe?

I deliver the specimens and leave.

Canceling out any memories of it--laughing at the strange hallucination.

The next Wednesday, people are on and off the elevator, and I reach the lab, but not before feeling a foolish ache.
No fifteenth floor.
No blue mist man.

I greet Melissa, the technician, and sign the needed paperwork and go home.

A car accident has kept us in the surgery center longer than expected.

I had no choice but to deliver the blood myself since all my staff was occupied with something or other.
I'm the only lost soul, the one who has nobody and no reason to rush home and make a mental note to buy tea this time.
I could have bought some last night, but it was pouring, and I had no umbrella.

Jabbing at the elevator button a few times, I step in, the door closes, elevator moves, the door opens,--and the dusky blue fog is back.
But how can that be?

Tapping the button for the lab floor, the door clatters, and that's all.

There in front of me, in the haze of blue, is the same man, floating in the swirls, violin tucked under his chin.

The melody is unmistakeable!
'Music of the Night' from The Phantom of the Opera.

My head tilts against the cool brown plastic of the carriage as I listen to the melody.
I'm suspended in time and space.
The magic in all of this is zigzagging in, around, and through my heart.