My clinic has to deliver all the blood samples collected for the week to Barts Hospital for analysis. And it's a Wednesday that we have Joyce, one of the nurses under my directive, assigned to this task. she's on honeymoon leave for a few weeks, and so I decided to take the first run over.
This evening is nice, no rain for once, and I walk to the hospital to deliver the precious goods.
The lab closes at five, and I make it my business to be there before then.
Entering the building, I step into an elevator and to the topmost floor of the hospital.
Fourteen!
I'm alone the whole time on the trip up.
The door opens, and I blink and blink again.
The door doesn't close, but that's not the most baffling thing.
What is in front of me is disorienting, no actually, it's terrifying.
I automatically shuffle backward, bumping hard into the back wall, to behold a swirling billowy blue mist.
No hall, no lab.
No floor.
Just this mass of blue cloud-like swirls.
Something must be wrong with my eyesight, and I knuckle-rub them, but the fluttery blue still exists.
In the midst of the haze a shadow, and a man steps through.
Solid.
Tall, slender, dressed in a suit.
His facial features, however, blurred.
He's standing- in mid-air!
Nothing under him!
Nothing around him but that damn cloud!
He's holding a violin and lifts it to place under his chin.
And plays 'Debussy's Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun.'
I know it well.
My mother is a pianist and has always loved the classics.
Shaking my head, I can't resist the urge to pinch my arm.
It must be the pizza I had eaten the night before.
I crane my head up to locate the elevator number board, and all are dark except one.
Fifteenth floor!
That's impossible!
Barts has no fifteenth floor!
Only fourteen!
I know! I've been in this building for years. Fourteen! That's the highest it runs before the roof.
Pressing the lit fourteenth-floor elevator button, the door shuts, opening to reveal the familiar receptionist desk.
On the fourteenth floor!
I catch my breath and think it's all a delusion. A result of working too hard-maybe?
I deliver the specimens and leave.
Canceling out any memories of it-laughing at the strange hallucination.
The next Wednesday, people are on and off the elevator, and I reach the lab, but not before feeling a foolish ache.
No fifteenth floor.
No blue mist man.
I greet Melissa, the technician, and sign the needed paperwork and go home.
A car accident has kept us in the surgery center longer than expected.
I had no choice but to deliver the blood myself since all my staff was occupied with something or other.
I'm the only lost soul, the one who has nobody and no reason to rush home and make a mental note to buy tea this time.
I could have bought some last night, but it was pouring, and I had no umbrella.
Jabbing at the elevator button a few times, I step in, the door closes, elevator moves, the door opens,-and the dusky blue fog is back.
But how can that be?
Tapping the button for the lab floor, the door clatters, and that's all.
There in front of me, in the haze of blue, is the same man, floating in the swirls, violin tucked under his chin.
The melody is unmistakeable!
'Music of the Night' from The Phantom of the Opera.
My head tilts against the cool brown plastic of the carriage as I listen to the melody.
I'm suspended in time and space.
The magic in all of this is zigzagging in, around, and through my heart.
While I stare, his features become sharper, more in focus.
Those cheekbones, carved like someone took a chisel, and those lips form a perfect pout.
He's a slightly built man, and the navy blue suit and pastel blue shirt fit flawlessly.
If he were legitimate, a solid body, one would consider him good-looking.
With the sharpness of a genius, although somewhat snappish in his behavior, such as intellectuals tend to be.
Again, he drops the violin to his side, and the doors glide close to deliver me to-the fourteenth floor and the real world.
A night of no rest. I can't figure out why my head won't let this go!
The non-existent level is called the fifteenth floor, the moody, eddying mist.
Is it moody because I am, or is it something more?
It's all an illusion, a fantasy. But why? What has taken hold of me?
And him? Why him? Why not a woman? Why anything at all?
Take hold of yourself, you blubbering idiot!
Come up with a process of elimination. Is it only myself that sees this?
But-if someone else does then-.
Aha! I have it!
"Mike, I need your help. No questions asked, as strange as it may be. Please help me and do as I ask."
Mike has worked at Barts for years, and we've become drinking buddies.
Mike scratches his jaw, shrugs his shoulders when directing him to board the elevator to the left and exit on the fourteenth floor.
The right one arrives, and I ascend, arriving at the lab floor to meet him at the desk.
"Let's do this again, please," I quietly say.
"Boy, are you strange today! his brow wrinkling, shaking his head.
On this, the second ride, my elevator remains vacant.
I refuse to look anyplace but down at the floor.
Goosebumps on my arms, the door slides, and the sound is of the violin, playing 'Mozart Piano Sonata 11'.
Shaken but caught under the spell, I disregard the experiment and lean against the back wall.
Mike forgot.
On the ground floor once more, and Mike is leaning against a post, arms folded.
"Can you tell me what the hell is going on?" his sigh heavy.
"Was anyone in your elevator on the ride up?" I ask with nervous tension.
"No. It went to the tippy top and came right down here, as all elevators are supposed to do," tapping one foot, all keyed up.
"Nothing unusual?" expecting- what?
"Damn, what are you about, man?" shuffling his feet.
"One more time, and I'll owe you a round of drinks. You take the other elevator."
A doctor, then a nurse steps in at differing floors, and the last stop for me is the lab.
Shit!
Meeting Mike in the lobby, he looks off into space, avoiding my eyes, "Let's go for a few drinks. You're losing your mind and need to get pissed."
Without answering, I walk out of the hospital and think-where to go next?
What do I do next?
I'm in a fantasy world.
Something out of a comic book or a bad movie.
Where will it end?
Now, that's all I think about, all I brood over.
Can he see me?
Who or what is he?
If I step into the abyss, will I fall?
Can I contact him in some way? Do I want any communication with this specter?
I'm torn between the knowledge to discover the solution and panic at knowing of that answer.
This evening I sit in my easy chair, a glass in one hand, a bottle of bourbon in the other. Pouring a liberal amount I must analyze this.
I am a doctor, after all, and used to scrutinizing information.
Is it only Wednesdays this occurs?
Is it only when I'm on the elevator alone?
There's only one way to find out, and that's to do the research, and this week I plan to visit the said hospital on Monday, Thursday, and Friday.
And ride that damnable elevator!
"Doctor Watson. What in the world is going on?" the head receptionist at the specimen lab desk declares, after my third stop on the fourteenth floor.
" I erm, have a specific fear of being stuck in an elevator. I recently decided to conquer that by riding up and down," laughing, "my doctor advised it."
" That's admirable of you! Is it working at all?" tapping the back of my hand lying on the counter.
"Yes. And I'll continue it for a bit longer if you don't mind," leaning forward, in this conspiracy together.
"Go right ahead," tutting her sympathy.
Joyce has returned from her honeymoon, but I inform her that I'll be making the blood run on Wednesday.
" It gives me a chance to leave early and walk," I say.
I approach the elevator with a sense of- dread? Apprehension?
My package held in my clammy hands against my chest as if to protect me from harm.
To my alarm, the door opens on the fifth floor, and two women walk in.
One pushes the ten button, and they leave when the elevator stops.
Frustration follows exasperation.
No matter how many times I try, there is always a person or persons venturing up.
Finally! Finally!
I'm alone in the cubicle, the door swings shut, opens, and the murkiness envelopes.
There he sits, in a blue armchair whose color fluctuates from dark to light.
A black suit, but his shirt wavered from dark blue to purple.
He crosses on leg over the other, all the while staring right at me
He opens a book that had been sat on his lap.
Alice in Wonderland!
He opens his mouth and from it springs forth a cultivated British accent-"Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, and what is the use of a book, thought Alice without pictures or conversations?"
Amazement along with awe punches me in the gut, much of my time taken up as one half of me listens, the other half consumes his features. I'm transfixed. Hypnotized.
The compartment vibrates, shutters and that returns me to reality, the door shutting concludes the reading.
No, No, wait! I want more! Stop!
My fists hammering with force, my knuckles growing sore from the battering.
But it's no use!
I'm on the fourteenth floor, jamming my finger into button after button, again and again, the doors alternately opening and shutting, rattling and clattering.
A doctor stops my wildness by gripping the door open and asks," Is the elevator not working?"
"So sorry," my cheeks coloring, my shoulders slump, and I descend to the first floor.
My Wednesdays are obsessively spent locating the fifteenth floor, the blue mist, and the human seated in a chair, delivering the words of Alice in Wonderland.
A bookstore two streets from my house has a hard copy of Alice and I eagerly but it to read in the evenings to coincide with 'him,' the blue mist man.
I have the book tucked under my arm, and stride into the coffee shop, ordering coffee black and ponder on the fact that I, John Hamish Watson, have officially gone insane!
Sipping the hot brew, I wonder, how am I indeed entertaining a romantic attachment to a mystical, non-existent shadow?
No, he's not a shadow because his form emerges as solid.
The chair, and the violin, and just recently a piano is all a phantasm, a blue, ever-flowing mist.
My logical brain side asserts-If he's solid, then how are he and the furnishings suspended in a void?
Could I step out of the confinement of the elevator? Take that chance?
Curiouser and curiouser!
At home now after a visit with the blue mist man, I nibble on dinner, make a cup of tea and rest it on my side table.
I light the table lamp and read up to where he's closed the book, then laid it to rest on his lap.
With each reading, I hear his voice echoing in my head.
Begin at the beginning, and go on till you come to an end: then stop.
My fear, my deepest dread is- what will happen when he finishes reading? Will he disappear? Head into the blueness as an apparition? Will there be no more fifteenth floor?
Looking in the mirror the next Wednesday, I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.
For I can't explain myself; I'm afraid because I am not myself, you see.
Quoting those silly phrases from Alice.
Keeping my eyes glued to his lips, those lips I want to be placed against mine, I fantasize.
I daydream while awake and daydream while asleep.
That vision of him standing up, placing the book on the seat, moving towards me, arms outstretched, welcoming.
I insert myself into the circle of his limbs like a tree enfolding me in its branches-and the blue mist surrounds, captures both of us.
It is a dangerous thing to unbelieve something only because it frightens you.
And this frightens me no end!
Walking late at night, at a brisk pace, the streets, the crowd has no meaning.
Feeling disgusted with the way my mind is racing for an answer, any answer, I've become consumed by him.
He's alive- in my head in the morning when I rise, in the afternoon when I take a lunch break.
He stands at the bathroom sink shaving. He sits at the cafeteria eating a sandwich.
I used to read fairy tales, I fancied that kind of thing never happened, and now here I am in the middle of one!
Face it you goop! That's all it is, John-one hell of a fairy tale.
Each day is a drag while I measure the days, hours, minutes until my next visit to the fifteenth floor.
How long is forever? Sometimes, just one second.
It's the last chapter of the Wonderland book.
I've dressed carefully for this Wednesday. Instead of my old jumper and khaki trousers, I'm in a dark blue suit, light blue shirt with a white tie.
Do I think this is the end?
I'm not sure.
But whatever the case, I've made up my mind.
After he concludes, before he closes the book, I intend to walk into that mist.
Whatever comes of it, I'm ready.
The only way to achieve the impossible is to believe that it is possible.
My pulse rate is majorly high. I feel clammy.
I hear his voice, see his body.
His long legs are not crossed but lazily stretched out.
He reads only a few lines, pauses, turns the page, and glances up, giving eye to eye contact.
The blue airier than usual.
He snaps the book shut, coming to the end, and my breath snags. I dry my palms on my trousers, ready to move.
Eyes never leaving his face, I pause, terrified, suddenly finding I'm not able to step out of the elevator.
He stands, his lean body stretching.
And-he glides, legs not doing the traveling, but moves smoothly in my direction.
I stop breathing for a second, conscious that a floor has emerged, and a room with four walls surrounds him.
The blue mist dissipates.
He's so close that I can listen to his breathing, rapid and sharp.
Can smell his body cologne. Touch him-if I dared.
I stutter, stammer, "I think-I think-I love you," knowing that I'm wide-eyed, staring, understanding this is the first words I've ever spoken.
Ah, but that's the point! If you don't think you shouldn't talk! his voice intense with emotion.
"I can't-can't talk, can't believe-."
"John Watson," lifting his hand to chase a curl away from my forehead.
"Yes, I'm not imagined, John Watson. As solid a human as you are," he smirks, all the while his finger is causing shivers while tracing circles on my cheek.
"I can't-I can't-," feeling every bit the fool. Not able to articulate or move a muscle.
He leans, his face almost touching mine, and the sense of him overpowers.
My legs begin to collapse, but his arm slides round to my back, holding.
I'm in his arms. I'm enclosed in his embrace!
His lips brush mine, so soft, so alive.
Without a thought, without the slightest idea of what I am doing, respond, tentatively, furthermore with an urgency I never considered I'd believe possible.
The elevator doors clank, clatter, making the fantasy a reality.
Releasing me, he moves, leaving a small distance between us.
I follow, leaving the comfort of the elevator.
"I love you, John Watson. From the first moment when you stepped into my world, to now."
"And you are-?" gaping, every breath rapid, as if my heart would tear out of my chest.
"Sherlock Holmes."
"How-why? What is the meaning-," scarcely able to speak. My words a whisper.
"The meaning?" his voice rumbles and with his lips a hairs breath away from mine, "Oh, 'tis love, 'tis love, that makes the world go round! John."