TAMPA, FL – Nurse Roy Chipman leaned forward, placing his head on his forearm while his face revealed tremendous disappointment, as the stark reality dawned upon him that he might have to take the stairs, not the elevator as he had originally hoped and intended.
“For the first ten, thirty, forty seconds, I was hopeful, tremendously hopeful,” Chipman confessed to Gomerblog, the wind clearly taken out of his sails. “The first minute passed, sure, I was concerned, but I’m an optimistic guy. I figured no problem, just be patient. But then it became two minutes, three minutes, and that’s when the prospect of the stairwell scared me.”
Trying to keep calm as he would during a cardiopulmonary arrest, Chipman quickly processed his options before acting.
“Come on, damn it, come on!!!” he uttered with heightened agitation, pressing the UP button eight or nine times in rapid succession. Nothing. In a last ditch effort, he pressed the UP button once more but, in a veteran move, held it down with pressure for 5 whole seconds before releasing. Nothing.
Health care professionals can relate. Nothing can possibly be more deflating than calling for an elevator and realizing the adventure was not to be. That your fate will be the staircase.
“Four flights, four,” Chipman muttered with complete resignation. “Against gravity.”
Chipman opened the door to the stairwell, at which point he heard a “Ding!” Hope! He rushed back towards the elevator bay. That’s when he received the punch to the gut, the salt in the wound. “Damn it, that one’s going down.” He looked down at his feet and sauntered sadly back to the stairs. “It’s just not meant to be.”
Gomerblog is asking that you keep Nurse Chipman and other health care professionals stranded by the elevators in your thoughts and prayers.
