I ran into her downstairs. She was lost, wandering around with one of her boys (who was dressed in hospital garb) and she looked a bit frightened. When she saw me, her face lit up and she hugged me and I hugged her back and then I helped her find the right elevator to her floor.
Later today, I was down by the elevator on the ground floor and as I was approaching the elevators I saw a very frustrated man in a wheelchair. His wife was trying to placate him. I asked how long they'd been waiting, and they said they'd been bypassed by two full elevators already and had been down there ten minutes. At that moment I noticed the door to the freight elevator open in the hallway to the side of the main elevator bank, and I ran over there to stop it and hold the door open for them so that they could ride the freight elevator up to their floor. It seemed to defuse the situation.
Returning to wait for the main elevator, I was joined first by a teenage girl in a wheelchair with an IV attached. She wore a neck brace and had crookedly bent hands and one leg in a cast from her ankle as far up as I could see. A minute later, a guy in a wheelchair joined us. He was wearing shorts and had some raw skin rubbed off of his thigh. The girl asked about if it was a burn.
"Nope," the guy said, "This is where they took the skin to put on my shoulder and on this foot". He pointed. She kind of blanched. He was missing a finger. He continued to talk. "They also took this finger and this leg."
"Oh," she said. "I'm sorry."
"I'm not," he said. "I'm alive! And I got something too!" He seemed to be enjoying the conversation. "I took 1500 volts electricity from Seattle City Light."
"Wow," I said.
"Yup," he said, "And it was free!" The elevator came then and he continued to joke with me all the way up to the 7th floor.
Another conversation: most days I stop to talk to L, one of the mailroom guys and he's usually quite cheerful. This morning I asked how he was doing and he said, "I wish I could say ok. But I'm not." I told him I was sorry and asked if there was anything I could do to help him. He said no, it was just early and he'd probably feel better as the day went on. Later I checked in with him and he was his cheerful self again. He said he'd felt better since he'd had lunch, but it was hard for him to forget his past sometimes and stay in the present.
I talked to G., the receptionist, on my mail rounds too. She told me she'd missed work yesterday to be with a friend whose uncle had died the night before. She and her fiancee had both gone over there to cry with her and hold her.
"We just went there to love her," she said. "She needed love. And that's what it's all about, isn't it?"
Yes, G, it is. It really is.