Elevator Accident Part 2

The trip downtown, though short in distance, seemed to take an eternity. It was slow motion city. Neither Bob J. nor I had much to say. Both of us were thinking about how Greg could have been injured so seriously on an elevator that was used every day. Our silence didn’t make the journey shorter or more comfortable.

The building was locked and the lights were off. We had considerable difficulty finding the light switches in the warehouse where the cutting machine, bindery, and elevators were located. During the typical work week the paper handlers’ morning shift arrived long before we did, so all the lights were on. And we left long before the night shift so we were completely unfamiliar with how to turn on the damn lights. We felt like idiots, stumbling around in the dark, not knowing such an elementary thing about your workplace. I was certain that Bob J. felt the same way.

When we finally succeeded in finding the switches and getting the lights on, we found another problem. The old hydraulic elevator was down another level, in the basement and its electrical supply was off. That caused another hunt in the dark, this time in the stygian gloom of the basement. After ten frustrating minutes Bob J. gave up and went upstairs in disgust, cursing the fact that the dumbest paper handler could have had the place operational in seconds while we sales and management types were still groping around in the dark, unable to find our asses with either hand. It was more than a little funny but Jorgee hardly in the mood to appreciate the humor.

Finally, I had a brainstorm. Instead of looking around the outside of the elevator, I raised the wooden gate, stepped inside and looked on the inside wall. The dim light filtering down the elevator shaft from the first floor provided just enough illumination for me to spot an electrical switch on the brick wall next to the hydraulic cables. In seconds I had the elevator up on the first floor. And yelled for Jorgee.

“Hey, Jorgee. I got it. Come on.”

He emerged from the toilet, zipping his fly. Holding a large flashlight under his arm. He stood silently, looking the old elevator up and down with a great deal of suspicion. “You know how to work this thing?”

“I’ve never operated it myself but I’ve been on it many times with Willy and Jess [Note: two of the paper handlers]. For Christ’s sake, you big pussy. Get on. It’s not going to crash or anything like that.”

“Don’t give me that shit. Can you run it or not?” He was really skittish.

“Of course I can. It’s actually pretty easy.” I was far from being as confident as I may have seemed but my curiosity was much stronger than whatever trepidation I felt. Besides, even then I believed Greg had somehow brought on the accident himself, by doing an as of yet unknown foolish act. Which I was not about to do, under any circumstance. But the pit of my stomach was heaving, despite my outward resolve and nonchalance.

Before continuing with the story, it is necessary to describe the elevator itself, which was of the hydraulic variety, operated by pulling on one of two metal cables that ran vertically along the interior of the shaft. A sharp downward yank on the first steel cable started the elevator up. To stop the upward movement, you grabbed the other cable and held on. A hard down pull on the second cable sent the car down the shaft. It was a simple hydraulic (oil) machine left over from an earlier and more primitive industrial era, circa 1915 to 1925. It advantages were that it was very inexpensive to operate, could carry immense weight without failing, and was extremely expensive to replace, which was the real reason for its longevity. Our building was no longer competitive as a warehouse so the owner, Washington University, was not about to lay out the cash. Besides, prior to that last Friday, we had had no accidents on that elevator.

Physically, the elevator was of the simplest construction. Its only solid component was the floor, which was made of thick, welded steel plates fastened to an underlying framework of steel beams. The three walls and roof were chain link fencing supported by a steel framework and braces. A number of flattened cardboard boxes had been placed over the fencing overhead to give the impression of a roof and to catch dust and debris falling from the shaft. The elevator itself had no doors. And that was more than somewhat disconcerting to anyone who rode it the first time. Each floor had two wooden doors at the opening to the elevator shaft. Those doors were much like the wooden slats used for picket fences. They were spaced several inches apart and were positioned vertically. When operated, one door moved up and the other down so the elevator or a particular floor could be accessed. However, those doors were not safety doors because the elevator could and would operate even though the doors on any floor were open. It was the responsibility of whoever operated the elevators to close the doors when activating the elevator. Yeah. Can anyone out there spell S-A-F-E-T-Y  H-A-Z-A-R-D?

Back to Jorgee, who stepped gingerly into the elevator. It swayed slightly, creaking ominously enough to make both of us start with apprehension. As he pointed the flashlight up the shaft, looking for what I’ll never know, I reached out and jabbed him hard in the ribs, and yelled at the same time: “HEY!”

It scared the living shit out of him. He threw his hands up and jumped straight up in the air. The flashlight went bouncing across the floor. “Jesus, fuck!” he screamed. “You stupid cocksucker! Don’t do that!” He picked up the flashlight to see if it still worked. It did. I was laughing so hard I thought I might piss in my pants. I sagged against the side of the elevator, my knees suddenly weak, laughing hysterically. He looked totally ridiculous, literally shaking in his boots. Yeah, it was dumb but we both needed to release the tension that had been building up. It was simply Jorgee’s misfortune to have given me the right opening.

“Come on, you wimp,” I said. “Shine your flashlight in the wall. Let’s get this over with.”

I tugged gently on the cable. The car bounced slightly and then began its slow ascent up the shaft. The light from the single bulb hanging overhead in the cage was barely strong enough to illuminate the walls but the flashlight beam enabled us to search for marks on the old bricks.

We found nothing significant between the first floor and the second. And nothing on the second floor except a large piece of cardboard lying immediately in front of the elevator door. I stopped the car, opened the doors and we got out. Despite the sunlight streaming through the windows, Jorgee directed the flashlight beam onto the cardboard, letting it stop on two small dark spots.

A strange expression on his face made me ask, “What? Something wrong?”

“This is where he was when we found him. Laying right there. Right where those blood spots are.”

I looked at the two small patches of dried blood. They were so small yet so important. “That’s it? That’s all the blood?” I couldn’t believe there wasn’t a huge pool of blood somewhere. I mean, he had been seriously injured and I had expected a lot more evidence of that.

“That’s it. He was right there, trying to stand up when I got here.”

“Jesus! He was trying to get up?”

“Yeah, he was. I made him lay down on his back but he was in a lot of pain and kept trying to move. It must have been from the collapsed lung.”

“What about his mid-section? Wasn’t that bothering him?”

“No. He even said that he couldn’t feel anything around his stomach. It was numb.”

We stood for a minute in silence, just staring at the cardboard, as if waiting for it to tell us what had happened. I couldn’t stand the thought of Greg lying there, twisting in agony.

“Come on, let’s go.” I walked back to the elevator. Jorgee followed slowly. Although I didn’t look at him directly I knew he was wiping tears from his eyes. Neither of us was a tough as we thought.

From the second floor to the fifth we searched carefully, silently. The faint groans of the elevator the only sounds. I stopped the car at the fifth floor.

“He must have gotten off here,” I said.

“Why?”

“Because this is where the paper samples were. The ones that he needed He was looking for three or four colors of that super glossy stuff from Finland. Mirri. They’re stored around the corner in the east section.”

Bob J. started to walk out of the car but I grabbed his arm to stop him. “Hold it. We haven’t seen any marks on the interior walls yet. Whatever happened, it wasn’t here. Let’s go up to the sixth floor and see if there’s anything out of the ordinary up there.” I started the elevator and immediately grabbed the other cable to stop it.

The elevator lurched and Jorgee looked at me strangely. “What?”

“Did you find any of the Mirri samples of the second floor?”

“No.”

“Were they on the elevator?” I knew immediately I was on to something.

“No. There was nothing in here. Why?”

“How about the bottom of the elevator shaft? Maybe they fell down there.”

“No. I had Topper check last night. Nothing’s down there except oil and dirt.” He frowned and shot me his pseudo-pissed off look. “You gonna tell me what’s going on or do I have to guess.”

“I don’t think Greg ever found the Mirri samples. Whatever happened, happened before he got them.”

Jorgee stood there staring at me without saying a word. Then he slowly nodded. “Maybe. You might be right.”

“My guess is that Greg went up to the sixth floor by mistake, thinking that’s where the Mirri was, and never got to five.”

“Could be. Let’s check it out.” He nodded up at the floor above.

I restarted the elevator and we lurched upward. About one fourth of the way up Jorgee’s flashlight beam caused something on the top of the fifth floor elevator door to sparkle. The elevator seemed to stop of its own accord. At least I have no memory of grabbing the cable to bring it to a halt.

Jorgee stepped forward, hesitating for a moment. I was right behind him and knelt down to see better. The beam of light danced across the sparkling metal. It looked exactly a tiny flattened metal donut. I had no idea why there was such a sick expression on Jorgee’s face.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Looks like an islet from Greg’s tennis shoe,” he said softly, carefully reaching forward to retrieve the piece from the wooden frame. He turned it over in his fingers. “That’s exactly what it is.”

“You sure?” I asked, my stomach suddenly active. All at once I didn’t want to see more about the incident. Or know more. I felt like I wanted to run home to my mother’s comforting arms, to hide under the covers. We stood looking at each other, not saying a word.

The elevator lurched upward, responding to my gentle pull. Inch by slow inch we crept toward the sixth floor, our eyes glued to the track of the flashlight beam as it swept across the brick wall. And suddenly, it was right there, the first physical signs of something well out of the ordinary. Two parallel, bright brick-orange scrapes in the old wall headed vertically up the shaft toward the sixth floor. About one inch wide, they were a little over two feet apart. They stopped approximately four or five inches beneath the metal floor lip that jutted into the shaft. Light from the pitiless beam illuminated fresh metal gouge marks on the floor lip. They stood out as bright scars from the older, rusted marks that covered the metal lip.

I stopped the car. We stood looking at the marks for a long time. Neither of us spoke our terrible thoughts. We knew it had happened right here. I restarted the elevator and slowly we climbed to the sixth floor. We got out, surveying the area around the open door carefully. But failed to notice anything out of the ordinary. There were no signs that Greg had been on that level late Friday afternoon.

Jorgee and I walked slowly back to the elevator but stopped before getting back into the car. Without comment we examined the juncture of the elevator floor and the sixth floor lip.

Without looking up, Jorgee finally broke the heavy silence. “He couldn’t have been caught between the elevator and the floor. The space is too narrow.”

“No,” I agreed. “There’s less than an inch separating the two. If he had been holding on to the floor, half in and half out of the elevator, this metal lip would have cut him in two.” I pushed the elevator floor with my foot, trying to see if it would move backwards in relation to the metal lip. It didn’t. I looked at J. “Plus there’s no way to get the elevator up higher since the sixth floor is the end of the line.”

“Shit, then where could he have been?” The question was asked out of sure frustration. Neither of us had an answer.

We stepped back into the car and began our slow journey down to the first floor. As we descended our eyes were pulled first to the horrible gouges in metal lip and then to the deep scrapes in the brick wall. Without warning I grabbed the elevator cable, jerking it to a sudden halt.

“Goddammit! What the fuck are you doing?” This time J. was really pissed off.

“Shine your light up there,” I pointed. “There. On the horizontal steel roof frame. Look how it meets the floor lip.”

He immediately forgot his anger. The light danced up the bricks to the dirty black bar that formed the horizontal support for the roof fencing.

“How much room is up there. Between the lip and the roof cage?” I asked.

“I’m not sure. Maybe five or six inches.”

“Looks less than that to me. We’re going back up.” I stepped out onto the sixth floor, flashlight in hand. “All right,” I told him. “Take the elevator down slowly. I’ll tell you when to stop.”

The car creaked downward at a snail’s pace. My eyes were glued to the descending steel roof frame. When it was almost exactly flush with the floor lip I told Jorgee to stop. I knelt to inspect the frame.

“How wide is the opening?” J. called, his voice soundly distinctly sepulchral as it echoed in the shaft.

“Three and a half inches, max,” I answered quietly, feeling sick enough to vomit. On the top and front of the steel roof frame were bright yellow scratches and metal flakes. “Bring it up a foot or two. But no more than that.”

“What do you see?”

As the top of the elevator car came about waist high to me, J. brought it to a quick stop. If I repeat myself here, please forgive me, but some additional explanation is required so Readers can understand this next part. The roof of the elevator car was formed by chain link fencing attached to a frame of horizontal steel bars. The fencing, in turn, was covered by old cardboard boxes that had been cut apart and laid flat. Their sole function was to catch the grunge falling in the elevator shaft and prevent it from ruining the top sheets of the paper that was being moved to the first floor for cutting and shipment to a client. And also to protect passengers from being splattered with that same oily crap.

I reasoned that if Greg had grabbed onto the top of the elevator cage the oily dirt covering the cardboard should have been disturbed. I looked carefully but it didn’t take an engineer or an accident investigator to see that the dirt had recently been scraped away. Especially in the vicinity of the metal scratches on the roof frame and the floor lip.

“Come on, what do you see?” Jorgee asked impatiently.

“Was Greg wearing a belt buckle that night?”

“Yeah. A brass buckle. Why?” His head appeared at my feet as the elevator rose slowly.

“There are a lot of fresh scratches and metal flakes on the roof frame,” I said softly.

“Jesus, when I found him his buckle was broken into three or four pieces.”

“What happened to it?”

“I threw it in the trash downstairs. I’m sure it was picked up last night.”

“Shit!” Though why I was so upset about the belt buckle I still don’t know. I stepped into the car and slowly took it down the shaft so Jorgee could see the top of the cage. He gently touched the scratches and then the flakes. Even in the dim light I could follow the tiny shower of sparking pieces of metal as they fell.

“They look fresh. Really fresh.” His tone was very subdued.

On the way down to the first floor we talked about how the accident could have happened. “So, what do you think?” He looked and sounded terrible. Beyond his depth, he needed my company as desperately as I needed his. The funny thing was we weren’t all that close until that day.

“It happened on six,” I said with conviction and believed it.

“But how?”

“He jumped on top of the cage and got caught by the lip as the car went down.”

“But why? Greg was a solid kid. Why would he do something so goddamn stupid?”

“My guess is he went up to the sixth floor, thinking that’s where the Mirri was. Maybe when he pulled the cable to stop the car it bounced a couple times and he got off, thinking it had come to a full stop. Then it either started down on its own or . . .” I hesitated for a brief moment, not knowing if I should reveal what I really thought. What the hell, I thought, a real accident investigator will come to the same conclusions. “Or one of the paper handlers on a lower floor leaned in the shaft, grabbed the cable and started it down.”

Jorgee frowned at me. “For Christ’s sake, Bob. Don’t ever repeat that. You don’t know exactly what happened. So don’t make it worse than it already is by guessing.”

“Okay, let’s assume that it started down on its own. Greg could have walked a few steps away from the elevator and then realized he was on the wrong floor. By the time he turned around and hurried back to the elevator it was about halfway down. He must have panicked, thinking he had really fucked up the elevator by not stopping it right the first time and had a runaway on his hands.”

“Yeah? Then what?”

“He jumped on top of the elevator cage, thinking he could easily swing his feet and upper body into the elevator. Or not realizing the floor lip was there, sticking out into the shaft. And maybe he miscalculated its speed. It might have been going faster than he anticipated. Either that or once he was holding on to the roof, with his legs hanging inside the car, he had no leverage to swing down into the elevator and he was crushed between the floor lip and the steel roof frame. Where we found the scratches and the metal flakes.” Shit, I remember thinking, crushed. A terrible word and an even more awful fate. I wished that I had used a word less evocative of the reality.

“Sweet Jesus, you might be right. It all fits.” Jorgee’s sigh held a deep finality.

We didn’t say much more then or on the ride back to Chesterfield. We had too much to think about to talk.

Later Saturday afternoon I called the Rectory and asked our pastor to include Greg in the prayers at all the Sunday Masses. This admittedly was an unusual thing for me to do since, at that time, I neither believed in the efficacy of prayer or in the existence of God. It was in effect a measure of my feelings of desperation and helplessness. How else could I help Greg in his struggle for his life? As I told Fr. Drennan the extent of Greg’s injuries I became so choked with emotion I had to apologize and hang up. Once the tears started I couldn’t seem to stop them.

Penny Kennedy called at 7:30 that evening and asked me if I had had a chance to talk to my doctor friend about the surgeon and the Hospital. I apologized profusely, telling her that I had meant to relay the message earlier and simply forgot. My OB-GYN friend, Kurt, had called one of his closest friends, a neurosurgeon at the University Medical Center and asked about Karpinski. He was told that Karpinski was a full professor in the Medical School, the Chief of Thoracic Surgery at the hospital, and the head of the Intensive Care Division. He was regarded by all the staff as an extraordinarily competent surgeon. The Head Nurse of the Intensive Care Unit told Kurt that the nursing staff thought that Karpinski walked on water. And that she thought that Greg had the best physician in the whole hospital. Especially given the nature of his condition. Plus, the hospital was the highest rated trauma care center in the metropolitan area. Penny softly thanked me for being so kind and hung up. I felt like a complete asshole for failing to call her.

The next day, Sunday, at the Medical Center was grim city. When San and I arrived at 10:30, Tom F., Beacon’s President, and his wife Kathy were with the Kennedy’s. Their faces were drawn with tension and apprehension. No one smiled a greeting.

San squeezed my hand tightly. “You don’t think that he . . .”

We hugged and kissed Tom and Kathy and the Kennedys, feeling a close bond with the suffering parents.

“How is he doing?” I asked Tom Kennedy, not wanting to know the truth I could read in the lines on his face.

“Not good. They can’t stabilize his blood pressure. It keeps jumping up and down. It’s so damned erratic.” He wiped his tear-reddened eyes with a crumpled tissue.

“They don’t give us much hope,” Penny sobbed.” All they tell us is bad news and then worse news. It doesn’t seem to be getting any better. I don’t think he’s strong enough.” Her thin body shook as the tears flowed unchecked down her cheeks. San put her arm around her and hugged tightly.

“We can’t give up hope, Penny.” Tom voice was adamant. Greg’s still fighting. We’ve got to help him by staying positive. If we lose hope he might be able to sense it and quit on us. We don’t want that.”

“Have you been able to see him this morning?” I asked Kennedy.

“Yes. He’s not as alert as he was yesterday but he knows we’re here. He tried to talk but it’s difficult to understand him with the oxygen mask on. I know he said, ‘Hi, Mom.’” Suddenly he turned and with a mumbled, “Excuse me,” hurried down the hall to the Men’s Room and much needed privacy.

Tom F. caught my eye and signaled for me to walk over to the drinking fountain with him.

“When did you guys get in?” I asked.

“About 8:00 last night. We came straight from the airport to see Greg.”

“How did you know about the accident?”

“Jorgee left a message with American Airline for me to call him immediately. Said that is was a medical emergency. Sort of scared the shit out of us, thinking it was a problem with one of our kids.” He looked at me and frowned, “Not that we . . .”

I interrupted him. “For Christ’s sake, Tom, I know exactly what you mean. Did the nurse let you in to see him?”

“They did but only by mistake. The Kennedys and their friends from Detroit had just left. Apparently the nurse knew he was expecting his brother and sister-in-law to arrive and when we said we had just flown in she assumed we were the relatives. Since she said we could go in for a few minutes I didn’t bother to set her straight.”

“Naturally. Was he awake?”

“Not only awake but very alert. Surprised the hell out of me after what Jorgee had told me on the phone at the Ft. Myers Airport. He recognized me as soon as I walked into the room. He was smiling big time under the oxygen mask.”

“Did he say anything about the accident?”

“Not really. He just said, ‘I really screwed up this time, Tom. I’m sorry. I really screwed up.’ I told him to forget it. All we wanted was for him to get better and come back to work. He smiled and told me that he’d be back in three days.” Tom turned away, wiping a tear from his eye.

“Three days he said and he meant it. When I took his hand he was so strong it shocked me. He looked so bad but was really gripping my hand hard. I just can’t believe he’s doing so awful this morning.” He wiped his eyes again and blew his nose. None of us tough guys could keep the tears in check.

“How are the Kennedys? They seem pretty torn up.”

“They are. About a half hour ago the doctor came out and told them that they were having trouble getting Greg stabilized. And that if they weren’t successful pretty soon he might not make it through the day. That’s when they both broke down. Greg must have been doing all right yesterday evening when they last talked to him and now all they can think about is losing him, Man, how hard it that for a parent?”

There was nothing I could say.

“Jorgee told me that the two of you went back to the warehouse yesterday. Did you find anything?”

“Not much, but enough to make a couple good guesses. We found gouges in the brick where he must have tried to dug his heels in and stop the elevator and metal scratches from his belt buckle on the steel frame. It looked like he tried to jump on top part of the elevator as it was on its way down. And got crushed between the floor lip and the metal frame.”

Tom F. sighed deeply, shook his head in pained disbelief, and didn’t say another word.