Page 8 of Lift Me Up

“Let’s count things. Five things you smell, four things you hear, three things–”

“N?”

“Yeah?” his voice echoes.

“I’m in a dark, dingy elevator that smells like desperation and sadness and slightly like someone has peed in here. Also, the floor is sticky, and my legs are too shaky to even consider getting up. I don’t think the counting thing is going to help.”

He hums, as if he’s in agreement. I close my eyes, lean my head back, and breathe. Then again. The two of us breathe in and out at the same time, him likely to the pace he hears me breathing in.

“Tell me something good,” I say to him.

“Something good?” he questions, but then I hear him make a small thinking noise. “My sister is having a baby.”

“Right now?”

“No! No, she’s about five or six months along now, but it’s my first time being an uncle. And I guess that scares me too. Hmh. Would you look at that? Never admitted that out loud before.”

I look up to the dark ceiling, imagining that that’s where he is and not somewhere so far away. It’s comforting to pretend I’m not alone. “Don’t you find it exciting?”

“Sure, but I’ve never… the only baby I’ve ever held was a cousin, and I was—like—barely six.”

“How old are you now?”

“Twenty-five next month. You?”

“Twenty-five. My birthday is in October.”

It’s a welcomed distraction, to have a reason to talk about something so trivial as a birthday party. I tell him about how Franny threw me a surprise rooftop barbecue party for all my friends and family. The crowd really only consisted of Franny and my mom, plus the neighbours she knew I spoke to in the halls from time to time, and a few friends from high school I still keep in touch with.

Franny had decorated everything in white balloons, streamers, and soft twinkling lights. When the sun went down, it felt like a rooftop of whimsy. I’m sure she got the idea from Pinterest, where she gets most of her outrageous, planned-to-exact-details ideas, and I tell him all about them.

“I should take notes for Sienna’s baby shower. Apparently because ‘She never got the sister she always wanted’, she’s had to settle for me planning a sprinkle and shower. What even are those? Aren’t they the same thing?” This makes me giggle.

“Not quite.”

“Maybe I should hire Franny.”

“Hey, get your own party-planning best friend,” I tease.

We talk about everything that comes to mind. He tells me about the book his sister made him read that’s about to be a movie, and I tell him about how I took up crochet and needlework the summer I turned fourteen—when I broke my leg and had nothing better to do. I tell him about the hats and blankets I make for the babies in the local NICUs, and he paints a very vivid picture of the time he almost got lost as an adult in the zoo on a family trip.

We talk about the little things; the things you might not tell someone you hardly know. Like how his favourite thing about going to the beach is the feeling of the sand at the very edge of the water where the tide rolls in and out between his toes. I say how sand is my least favourite thing about the beach, and he tells me that I’ve got to see the sand at one of the provincial parks, how it reminds him of the white sand beaches in Florida. I’ve never been there either, but I think if I told him that he might lose his mind.

“How are you feeling now?” he asks sincerely.

“Better. All things considered.”

“Good. I’m doing my job then,” he says.

Then, part of me feels sad. I know this is his job, I know I asked him to stay, and I’m sure this is well out of his jurisdiction to do this. He might get fired for it and it would be my fault. But for a moment, one could pretend that this wasn’t just him talking to me for a job. That he actually cared whether or not I’m okay.

“That you are,” I mumble back. I fall silent, unsure how to continue.

“Georgie?” A deep voice, not N’s from the speaker, calls out to me. I look around for the source of the voice, and then I look up.

“Holy shit. Hi!”

The voice in question comes from the shadowed man in the ceiling. They’ve literally taken out the ceiling tile of the elevator. He tells me, “You’re going to be fine. We’re almost ready to get you out of there.”