The Elevator Conversation

Based on a true story

It was about three in the afternoon and I had just parked my car. I was on the fifth floor of a parking garage in the middle of a small town that could no longer pay to maintain it. I got out and locked the door; the car chirped twice. The concrete was littered with the strangest assortment of candy wrappers, broken glass, and- were those someone's flip-flops?

Groaning, I walked until I found the stairs. A giant hand-written sign with peeling tape read, Stairs closed for repair; will reopen in June 2014. I sighed. June 2014 was ten years ago. It was unlikely that it would ever be repaired in this town.

I turned to the elevator. The doors had been shiny once, many years ago. Pulling my sleeve up to cover my finger, I pressed the button. It lit up yellow. I tapped my finger and silently counted the seconds one, two, three... sixty-three, sixty-four... one hundred fifty-seven, one hundred fifty-eight, one hundred fifty-nine... I started to think that the elevator was also broken, and I'd have to walk down the same ramp I drove up.

Suddenly, it dinged and the doors slowly opened. Inside stood a woman who looked in her early twenties. She wore hospital scrubs. Her eyes looked tired, and her hair was pink, but only at the ends, because it had grown out. Around her neck was a small beaded necklace that would've suited a small child. I walked inside. She eyed me. The ground floor button had already been pressed. I stepped in and stood in the opposite corner.

"There's a bug on your shirt," she said quietly, barely a whisper.

"Oh!" I exclaimed and quickly brushed it off. "Thank you for telling me."

She nodded in response.

We remained in awkward silence.

"What brings you to this town?" I asked her curiously.

"Work," she said, fingering her necklace, looking uninterested, "you?"

"A road trip," I replied.

"Hmm.." she said faintly.

"That's an interesting necklace. Where did you get it?," I asked because she was fiddling with it again.

Her eyes narrowed slightly. "My brother made it."

"Where is he now?"

"He's dead," she whispered, barely audible, "He died of cancer. He was seven. He was in so much pain... It hurt to watch."

"I'm sorry for your loss," I said.

"It was a long time ago," she shook herself, "I felt like people never understood. They said they were sorry and tried to console us, but that's not what we wanted. We wanted someone to talk with about the problem. We didn't want to feel better. We wanted to understand. Now I work for hospitals across the country. Try to give people the support that we never had. That's probably too much... sorry." She pursed her lips.

"No need to apologize," I told her.

Suddenly the elevator doors squeaked open.

"It was nice meeting you," she said, "enjoy your day."

She smiled and exited the elevator.

I left too.

As I walked down the oven-hot sidewalk in the dying town, I thought about what the woman in the elevator had told me. She had said that it hurt to watch her brother in pain, yet she still worked around people suffering in the same way. She'd taken the pain she felt and used it to help others.

Suddenly, I smiled. It was just then that I realized what a miracle it was that I ended up in that elevator. How funny it was that people were often in the most interesting situations, yet they ignored it. So many times people find themselves in an elevator with an interesting person, yet just don't start a conversation. How could they know that one conversation could change their entire life.