Home » The Ironic Elevator (Part Two)

"Are you all right?" I asked. The man was quite heavyset, his large blue suit rumpled from both the humidity of the day and the weight it wrapped itself around. Although crumpled, it was still an expensive and well-tailored suit. It might be hard to imagine a very large man with a well-tailored suit, but in this case it was a nice suit. It did not hide his girth, but he looked somewhat stylish.

 

In his right hand he held a leather briefcase.

 

He had flown back against the wall of the elevator, and as I rushed forward into the elevator, I barely heard the wisp of the doors as they closed, leaving us alone.

 

The man didn't answer me. He was breathing with increased difficulty, his large body moving in waves and a motion that large people seem to have when they cough, or gasp for breath, or shiver from the cold. This motion I was witnessing was a definite large gasp for breath.

 

"Sir?" I asked, moving across the small distance which separated us. I was suddenly afraid the man was going to have a heart attack and keel his great weight over directly in front of me. Or, which would be very ironic, he would grab my arm on the way down and drag me with him. It was suddenly very comic as I had the picture in my mind of him falling on top of me and suffocating me to death.

 

And although irony seems to happen at the most unusual of times, this was not one of them.

 

Or so I thought.

 

The man clutched his chest and dropped his briefcase onto the floor. I didn't notice the briefcase snap open when it hit the floor, so I didn't see what was inside. My full attention was on the very large and now-asphyxiating man in front of me. His eyes were rolled back into their sockets as he clutched for air and his chest. His head was moving back and forth in strange slow-motion, and it was then I realized what he was doing. He was not clutching his chest. Oh, he was having a heart attack all right, I think I understood that. But what he was reaching for was the pocket of his shirt inside his suit coat.

 

"What is it?" I cried, not quite knowing what to do. The man had his hand inside the lapel of his coat now and I watched as he reached into his shirt pocket and removed a small plastic vial. It was brown with a large white wraparound label that told me immediately it was a prescription medicine. The man grasped the bottle with his hand and as he took it out he dropped it on the floor of the elevator. He moaned and leaned his head back against the wall of the elevator and I watched as his eyes dropped to the floor and looked at the vial of medicine. That was when I looked down at the floor as well and that was when the irony started.

 

 

Actually the irony began a little after this but at this time, with one of us grasping at his chest and the other of us transfixed and not understanding the speed at which events sometimes happen, there was cause for irony.

 

To be sure.

 

On the floor of the elevator were four objects. One was the briefcase that had snapped open on impact. One was a small brown vial which obviously contained nitroglycerin or heart medicine of some kind. The cap of the vial must have come loose as there were pills on the floor. I saw the cap roll toward the door of the elevator, and that was when I realized we were moving. We were going up.

 

If I think about it now I think I know what happened. I'm looking at the display of numbers over the door as I wait for the elevator and see the elevator is on the seventeenth floor and still rising. 

 

So, as I was saying, if I think about it what happened is this: I accidentally bumped this large man as I entered the elevator and he had a heart attack at the same time. One of his flailing arms reached out and accidentally struck the panel with the rows of plastic floor buttons, causing the elevator doors to close and the elevator to rise.

I watched as the vial of pills rolled into the door and fall onto its top silently. Even as I was watching the cap I could see two other objects on the floor, although one of them was rather obscured. It didn't strike me until I was bending down for the medicine what those other two objects were.

 

You have to understand that all of this happened very fast. There was no time for thought or contemplation, no time for decision or indecision, either. In fact, there was barely enough time for action, strange as that may sound.

 

Here I was, in an elevator with a very large man who was having a massive heart attack. If you have never been in this position, it's very difficult to imagine the proper course of action. Of course, instinct told me to reach for the medicine, which is what I was doing. This was the proper thing to do, obviously, and I know most people would do exactly the same. Certainly I would be unable to do anything else. Even if I had known what I know now, I believe I would have acted as I did.

 

At the beginning, anyway.

But I continued to bend for the medicine and when my eyes drifted over the money I only had a short time to notice there was a great deal of money there. That was when I hesitated and when I saw the photograph of my wife I stopped.

 

to be continued . . .