Just In Time

The elevator dings in the lobby, and I haul myself off the bench to go up to my doctor’s appointment.

The older woman who is in the elevator hits the button for her floor, as do I, and then the door just sorta... doesn’t close.

We can hear, before we see her, another woman approaching the elevator bank having an animated conversation on her phone in a grating, nasal voice (“Well, I didn’t know she was going to show up, and I thought that if I was in her position then I would have kept going...,”). 

Seconds pass, the doors refusing to shut, the tension rising as that voice gets closer, and closer, until, “Jesus,” says the older woman, stabbing the >|< button repeatedly, and the doors close on the startled woman’s face just as she’s about to get on, still talking.