If We’d Never Met
The stainless-steel doors binged open, and she sighed, almost amused by her bad luck.
“Going down,” an eerily calm robotic woman’s voice responded.
The open doors revealed the man, slouched proudly against the wall, staring at his phone. Of course, she thought, why wouldn’t it be him. She considered catching an elevator at the next terminal, not really wanting this stranger’s company, even for 2 minutes. But after checking her watch, she saw her plane was 10 minutes from boarding. This was her only option. So, she pushed past her fellow airport travelers and joined the man as the doors closed. She wondered if he recognized her in her newly changed shirt, or if he had been too busy on his phone call earlier to even see the person whose day he’d ruined. Instead, she just breathed in and out, hoping this ride would be over shortly.
The air in the elevator was thick with discomfort. The harsh, cramped space seemed tighter with two people than it would’ve with fifty. Every beep of the floors changing or hum of the pullies seemed to irritate her more, or maybe it was just the way the guy was ignoring her. Not sheepishly ignoring her either, out of guilt or embarrassment; just blatantly and obnoxiously. She hadn’t gotten a good look at him earlier, but even now, his appearance bugged her. His shirt was half-tucked in, as if he had reconsidered his outfit halfway through putting it on. He slouched against the cold metal railing, scrolling his phone. Even in her heels, he was a good 6 inches taller than her. It made her feel small and maybe a little self-conscious in her pencil skirt and blouse, but she tried to ignore it, her fingers tapping methodically against the metal railing.
Without warning, the two passengers stumbled slightly in their spots, like riders on the subway do as it slows unexpectedly before approaching a station. Cursing loudly, the man’s phone slid out of his hands as his footing faltered. The elevator seemed to halt as quickly as it had started up a moment ago. The doors stood shut.
This isn’t happening, the woman thought. If I close my eyes, this won’t be happening. Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out. She shut her eyes tight as she regained her balance.
The man simply sighed a bit to himself and said, “I guess we’re stuck here.”
“No shit, Sherlock.” She hadn’t forgotten the incident. If this guy hadn’t spilled his coffee on her, she wouldn’t be in this situation. But even to her own ears, the comeback sounded harsh. First impressions could be wrong. “Sorry,” she added, “I don’t like elevators.”
“Obviously,” he responded rudely. Ok, so maybe first impressions weren’t all wrong.
“What are we supposed to do?” the woman asked, trying her best not to sound worried. Without realizing it, she noticed she had cramped herself in the corner of the elevator. Maybe it made it seem bigger. The man didn’t even respond, he just walked over calmly, and pressed the CALL HELP button. His silence only ticked off the woman more, but at the same time, he had done something useful for once.
The button lit up softly and emitted a small beep, but no voice came on to help them. At first, static, and then it picked up some background noise. Chatter, yelling, but still, no one there to alert of their situation. No one there to help.
“This is bad,” the woman groaned. She paced the few feet of available space back and forth, back and forth. He was just staring at the call button, as if his mind control could will someone to the phone.
“It’s not that bad, we’ll be fine.”
“Don’t tell me we’re fine,” she snapped back, stopping her pacing, “I have to catch a flight to Boston in 10 minutes. All you have to do is finish drinking your coffee, whatever of it isn’t on the shirt in my bag.” He glanced at her.
“You’re still stuck on that, I see.” He said it with a hint of a smile on his face, like laughing at a joke only he understood.
“And Sherlock cracks his second mystery of the evening, folks.” To hell with formalities. This day couldn’t have gone more wrong, and his attitude wasn’t helping to diffuse the tension. “Look, I’m just saying, if you’d had a tighter grip on your Starbucks, maybe I wouldn’t have been stuck on this elevator.”
He didn’t respond.
“Look, I just want to get out of here. Help me, for once.”
He didn’t fight her after that either. He didn’t really say anything. They just stood in silence.
“So the call button’s useless?” she asked, only wanting one answer.
“Not ‘useless’ necessarily. It’s just not being useful right now since the button isn’t calling for help as its name suggests it should.” He knelt down and kept tapping it, but it didn’t grow louder. No one came to their rescue. No one realized that there were two people trapped annoyingly close to one another, with no end in sight. Then, after a couple seconds of silence, the noises became louder, almost more frantic. Quiet sirens pierced through the speakers, like a dog barking from inside a house: far-off and muffled.
“Oh god, tell me there’s not a fire in here,” the woman said.
“Please, if there was a fire we’d be the first to get out. Someone would be on the phone immediately.” But even he seemed a little more concerned than he did before.
The woman started to realize how tucked away they were, small and out of sight, like socks trapped in the inner workings of a washing machine. The dated checkered floor of the elevator started to spin underneath her, as if ready to catch her, anticipating her beginning to faint. Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out.
“Are you okay?” The voice brought her back to reality. Back to where she was. Back to her upcoming flight. 25 minutes had passed, and as she checked her watch, she sighed spitefully. “I’ve missed my flight. It’s official,” she commented bitterly. He didn’t respond.
“Oh, I’m sorry I caused this great inconvenience to you which has ruined the plan of your entire day,” she mocked, trying to imitate him in a deeper voice, “I’m sorry I haven’t even apologized for my mistake which might have saved you hours, and maybe your job, maybe even your life since there might be a fire in this building.” The woman felt a bit stronger now that the man wasn’t as tall. She got up in his face, trying to elicit some reaction from him. His aloofness was worse than if had screamed at her. Luckily it didn’t last long. He stepped up from the ground, forgetting about his call-button mission, and she was reminded of just how tall he was.
“You think this is my fault?” he scoffed indignantly. “You think I wanted this elevator to be stuck? You think I can somehow control this?”
“Maybe not, but you certainly didn’t help this morning by being careless. You could’ve taken a second to clean up the mess you made. You could’ve called the person back 5 minutes later if you weren’t so distracted. You could’ve gone to another stupid stall for coffee.” She was almost yelling now. The containment only increased the pressure building inside her. Something was going to blow, hopefully not the elevator.
“I’m not careless. And if you think you can pin an entire string of misfortune on me for one mistake, then I’m sorry that you’re an idiot,” he said, growing more and more frustrated. Fists clenched, he knelt down once more to distract himself. He kept hitting the different buttons in futility, hoping for some kind of response.
“That’s not going to work. No one’s coming for us. You haven’t done one helpful thing-”
“Just, shut up! Be quiet, I’m trying to get us out of here!” he yelled, losing control. He picked up his phone sitting next to him on the ground, tucked his arm back, and pitched it as hard as he could to the floor, shaking the flimsy shoebox they stood in so hard that something clicked and it dropped from the emergency break.
It fell a good 5 feet. The woman screamed as she tumbled to the corner, not caring about her flight or the spilled coffee or anything but getting out of here. Away from this situation outside of her control. Away from the walking mistake costing her all of this trouble - maybe now her life.
But then, a ding. The number on the LCD above the door lit up once more and changed to “6”. The elevator waited, dropped maybe an inch lower, and fantastically, opened. They looked at each other, both still in shock. “We could have died,” the woman said. Her head felt like screaming, but it came out as a whisper.
“But we didn’t,” the man said calmly, almost smiling. He was the first one to walk out into the cramped and stuffy airport. Although now it seemed as open and clear as a park on a weekday.
“Thanks, I guess,” the woman said as he left, still bitterly. She heaved herself up from the corner, legs shaking. Breathe in. Breathe out. There wasn’t time for this. The world around her was beginning to return, and she needed a plan. Tell maintenance about the elevator, get on a new flight to Boston, get as far away from this place (and him) as soon as possible. As soon as she walked into the crowd, she popped in her noise cancelling headphones. She spotted a help desk out of the corner of her eye and walked towards it.
Music filled her ears and started to calm her down. Breathe in. Breathe out. One of her favorite oldies by Barbara Streisand. Strolling through the airport, she noticed how busy it was. Maybe it was still shock, maybe just stress from the last hours’ events, but everything seemed to be moving faster around her. People were running. Parents were clutching their kids’ hands. That’s when she noticed the crying. A woman with two toddlers was hunched over, sobbing, as an airline employee frantically searched up something on his computer. Her noise-cancelling headphones blocked what he was saying to console her, but it didn’t seem to be working.
She tried to focus on her music, but as cell service returned to her phone - which was barely alive - it began to shoot up with notifications. The bingging started to overwhelm her, more than the usual havoc her phone supplied. They started to whir around in her brain, little mosquitos of dread slowing starting to pick at her skin as words popped out. Thousands of “are you ok”’s and “I love you”’s. “Did you get off in time”’s and “where are you”’s. News alerts: hundreds. Keywords stuck out like needles. “Crash”, “Accident”, “Boston”. The airport and its visitors spun around her as she stood still, it all coming together. Her breathing quickened and she couldn’t hear the havoc around her - only her heartbeat and the music thrumming through her ears.
But we said one hello…, sang Barbara Streisand.
And look at how the world begins to spin…
Look at how the shadows disappear…
Now that you are here…
All the what-ifs came flooding in before she could build a dam to stop them: a different coffee stall, a working elevator, an on-time boarding, a flight she didn’t miss, a blouse burned to ash instead of stained with coffee. Every action, every choice, connected and twisted around another. She looked to her right and saw her elevator partner walking off silently, as if immune to the distress around him. She realized the song was still playing through her headphones:
If I never met you…
My life, my life might be a sad song of regret…
If we’d never met…
He walked out of her view as she wondered something. Will he ever know, she pondered, that he saved my life?
