Fearful Elevation

Mack was used to being called a hypochondriac.

As a boy, he begged his mother to take him to the doctor because a spider bite may have been a small tumor. Sitting on the doctor’s table with his pants down to his ankles, he distinctly remembered the doctor touching his knee with shockingly cold hands, his index finger poking at the red dot.

“Do you know what it is?” Six-year-old Mack asked, his eyes wide with fear and too-much knowledge.

“Yup,” the doctor replied, patting the boy on the knee and turning away.

“Is it a tumor?” Mack whispered as he pulled his trousers up.

His question was met with a chuckle as the doctor adjusted his thick-framed glasses, looking down at the short boy in front of him.

“No, Mack, it’s just a little spider bite.”

Mack slumped his head, ready for the speech he knew all too well. The doctor bent forward, bringing himself to Mack’s height and softening his voice.

“Just because you read about something scary doesn’t mean it’s going to happen to you,” the doctor cooed.

“You don’t have to be so afraid. You have the rest of your life to be afraid. There’ll be lots of girls and work and property taxes to worry about before you know it. Just spend the time you have now enjoying yourself. I know it’s easy to have a big imagination, especially for a boy your age, but you can’t insist that you’re dying every week, it’s not good for you.”

The doctor looked to the corner at Mack’s mother, who nodded adamantly with feigned sympathy and frustration.

“I keep telling him that, Doctor Jeffers,” she tutted. “Every week it’s a new thing. Last week he thought he may have Progeria because he saw a little girl with a case of it on Jerry Springer.”

She took out a compact mirror and fixed her lipstick.

“So guess what? No more Jerry Springer,” she smiled, baring her teeth at Mack.

***

Mack let out a deep sigh, reliving that uncomfortable moment in Doctor Jeffers’ office all those years ago.

He adjusted the briefcase in his hand, hoping the anxiety he was feeling would soften once the elevator light reached his floor. 33… 34… 35… ping!

The doors opened and he got in, relieved to be the only person inside so far. He hated when you had to exchange awkward smiles with strangers and ask what floor they were headed to, because it was always the same— First Floor, every time. Especially at ten-o-clock at night on a Friday.

Mack didn’t mind working late on Friday nights in one of the biggest buildings in Philadelphia on Market Street. He was proud of his title, of his name engraved in the directory, of the person his clients looked up to.

He was Mack McCullen, Wrongful Death Attorney at Law. At only twenty-nine he was the best at his job in the county, making all those big lawyers he went up against look like simple process servers in suits.

“The truth doesn’t need to be hidden,” he would state in his opening each time. “Here, today, we will bring light to what they have buried,” pointing to the Defense’s table, he would then nod at the judge and sit with confidence.

It wasn’t the money that Mack enjoyed the most, it was the feeling of being right, of being able to rectify someone else’s wrong and getting them to admit to it, kind of.

Looking down at the keyless BMW fob in his right hand, he thought, the money doesn’t hurt though.

Using a tissue, he pressed the button for Level One and watched the doors close, the stainless-steel sheen almost a mirror before him. Mack looked at himself in the wavered reflection, a young man with a lot of hair and a lot more anxiety to go with it. He stuffed the tissue into his pocket and looked away.

The elevator beeped, slowing, and opening its doors for Level Twenty-Three. A tall woman, about Mack’s age, entered the elevator with a crooked smile and pantsuit. She tucked a piece of wavy hair behind her ear and leaned against the railing.

“Going down?” Mack inquired.

“Yes, thank you,” she replied, returning the small smile.

The elevator doors closed, moving them slowly and steadily to Level Twenty. With another ping, the doors opened to a darkened floor, causing them to look quizzically at each other before closing again, a bit more slowly this time.

The woman cleared her throat.

“Well, that was weird,” she said.

“Yeah, maybe they’re just a little weird on Friday nights,” Mack said softly. He pressed Level One again, his heart beginning to race.

“Do you always work this late?” She inquired, making small talk.

The elevator sat still, its calming jazz eerily pouring through the speakers above them.

“Sometimes, if I have a lot of caseloads,” he mumbled, loosening his tie.

“Me too, I just started here a couple weeks ago, though,” she murmured, adjusting her feet. Mack noticed her shoes now, some type of strange sequined slippers you’d see in Bali or Hong Kong.

“Are you a lawyer?”

“I like to think of myself as a Legal Genie,” she said through a loose grin.

Like the uncorking of a bottle of prosecco, the elevator came to a sudden halt, causing Mack’s stomach to lurch. The fluorescent lights and jazz went out simultaneously, leaving the couple in darkness.

“Oh my god,” Mack whispered, fumbling for the elevator buttons.

He pressed and pressed without a difference, eventually using his palm to press all of them at once like a child.

“Oh, wow, I think the power is out,” the woman said calmly.

She pulled out her phone, temporarily lighting the small room they were in. Mack’s forehead had already begun to sweat, his lips dry with fear. She pressed a few keys and gave up, putting the phone back into her bag.

“There isn’t any signal. Are you okay?”

Mack began hyperventilating, his thoughts caving in on him like a mildewed door giving into a winter blizzard. Falling. Oxygen. Heart attack. Climbing. Severed limbs. Blood. Pain. Death. His mind couldn’t stop, like that of the six-year old boy he once was.

Slumping to the floor, Mack released his brief case and began to shake. From fear of running out of oxygen because of this woman with him and for fear of sitting on an elevator floor in a public building. Through the madness he wondered why his brain just would not stop. Wasn’t one fear enough to deal with at once?

The woman got on her knees and crawled toward him, gently reaching out as to not scare him more.

“Hey, calm down,” she whispered. “It’s going to be okay, it’s probably just a city thing and we’ll be out of here soon. If you panic, you’ll only make it worse.”

“I KNOW THAT!” Mack screamed, his voice bouncing off the steel walls.

“Well if you know that, maybe you should SHUT UP!” She yelled back, causing him to catch his breath.

She sat beside him, pulling her knees into her chest and pressing her right arm against his left. Although a perfect stranger, probably, most likely, riddled with germs and unknown bacteria, Mack leaned against her and closed his eyes.

“What’s your name?” He heard her say in the darkness.

He swallowed, wanting to sound like a man before he spoke.

“My name is Mack. Mack McCullen... What’s your name?”

“I’m Present. Present Thyme.”

“What?” Mack grunted. He spoke through his teeth, wondering if this was some strange trick God was playing on him, again, or maybe one of his co-worker’s.

She laughed, “No, seriously. My name is Present. Not like a gift but like the now, you know. Present.. present time? Get it?”

Mack was quiet as she exhaled somewhat sadly.

“Yeah, I know, sounds like a joke,” she finally said, pulling her knees away and bumping into his. “My parents were really into Eckhart Tolle when they had me. Sorry.”

Mack felt his breathing begin to steady. He smelled the spicy floral perfume she was wearing and the smoothness of her pale skin against his. Although odd, she was very pretty, very different from what he imagined a female lawyer could be. From what he typically interacted with in the office and court rooms.

“That’s a cool name,” he said eventually, turning to where she would be in the dark.

“Thanks.”

“The truth is, Present,” he continued, “I’ve never lived in the present. I’ve always been afraid of what could happen and now it has. I’m going to die here in this elevator with you tonight, and Ellen Hudson will never have any justification for her husband’s death Monday morning.”

He swallowed hard, expecting her to pull away from him like most women would, and have done.

“Well, Mack,” Present whispered, “I think Ellen Hudson has the best lawyer in Philadelphia if he can be worrying about her during a power outage inside an elevator. That shows great bravery to me.”

Mack could feel her breath on his cheek now, the weight of her words washing over him.

“I’ve never been called brave before,” he stammered.

Present stroked the stubble on his cheek, pulling his dry lips to hers.

“Well now you have,” she breathed.

As she kissed him, an electric hum rose from below and above them, the fluorescent lights and jazz gently flickering back on.

Welcome to the Present, Mack thought as he kissed her back, grasping a strand of her waves in his hand.