stuck in the lift

For the first time in my life, I got stuck in an elevator. Fortunately, I wasn’t alone. Last Saturday, Hubby, Caila, Ate Cel and I had just left the apartment and were heading out to shop for groceries. We stepped into the elevator, pressed the G button, and when we arrived at the ground floor, the doors remained closed. We tried pressing the button to open them, but nothing happened. We pressed the B button to see if it would open at another floor, but all it did was go to the basement and stay shut. We went to the ground floor again, then pressed the emergency button until we could hear the watchman’s voice. For almost a minute, Hubby shouted to him through the intercom, telling him to call the maintenance people or help us get out because the doors wouldn’t open.

After a while, we could feel the elevator shaft moving even though none of us had pressed any of the buttons; first it went straight to the 12th floor, then down, stopping at the 5th, 4th, and 1st floors, before stopping again at the ground floor. Then it went up again to the 4th floor, then down to the 1st, then up to the 4th again, then back down to the 1st. This went on for about 10 minutes, and during the time we were going up and down the floors, I kept holding my tummy, silently praying that the elevator cables wouldn’t break and the shaft we were in wouldn’t fall down to the basement. Blame the movies for making me think that. It was a good thing Caila wasn’t frightened, but she did tend to get fidgety after some time, asking me to carry her (which of course I didn’t and couldn’t do…because I was worried of breaking cables and plunging elevator shafts). After a while, we stopped at the ground floor, and again we pressed the emergency button. This time, Hubby asked me if I knew the distress signal in Morse code, which I remembered from the old Nokia mobile phone alerts. We weren’t really in distress, but naturally, we wanted to get out of there right away.

Finally, we heard some sounds from outside, and a few minutes later, the elevator doors were opened mid-way by the maintenance person using one of his tools, giving us enough space to step out into the lobby and cool air. It was already 7pm when that happened, so the maintenance people had already left hours ago and were called to return to help us out. It’s a good thing they responded right away, the electricity didn’t go off, the cables didn’t break, and we only had to suffer (“suffer” talaga ‘no?!) for 20 minutes. Thank God!

Now, every time we go in that particular lift, I can’t help but hold my breath until we arrive safely and the doors open to the floor we need to go down on. I swear if I weren’t pregnant, I’d gladly take the stairs instead.