Travelling in Time...

They pulled slowly into the parking lot, rolling over the cracked asphalt. Some of the pot holes had been large enough to swallow a small animal. Her father cursed, something he had been doing more frequently in the recent weeks, and her sisters stifled laughter in the seats behind her. When her father opened the door to pay the parking fare, Lauren could hear the whipping of the wind through the barren trees. A chill ran up her spine. As her father approached the ticket dispenser a few paces away, Lauren looked behind her and whispered harshly to her sisters that they ought to behave if they wanted to stay out of trouble. They rolled their glitter shadowed eyes at her and continued to pass their little plastic tubes of lip gloss back and forth and squeal in delight about how shiny they were.

A few minutes later, the four of them were making their way to the hospital door, heads down in order to escape the wrath of the night's brutal wind. It was only about 6:30, but it was dark. The entrance way reeked of sanitizing solution and burnt cookies. There were people milling about everywhere looking lost as though they had been thrust into this scene against their will, which most of them probably had been. Lauren and her family were not lost though. They knew their way by heart now. They made it up the stairs and stood impatiently in front of the delayed elevator. Her father tapped his foot quickly, nervously. He was angry about something again. The elevator doors opened and a flood of all sorts of people rushed out. They all had one thing in common.There were expressions of deep worry etched into each of their faces. Lauren stepped onto the elevator behind her two sisters who were vying for the envied spot at the front of the elevator, the spot of the person who got to push the buttons. Their father followed, admonishing the two girls for their behaviour which he found to be embarrassing considering the public building they were standing in.

The elevator ride seemed longer than normal. The silence was almost unendurable. Lauren could hear the squeak of the gears pulling the machine up to its destination on one of the higher floors of the building. They were the only four people in the elevator, and from how they stood so far apart all staring intently at the ground, you would never know they were related.

 Lauren did not want to see her this way. She was not herself. She was not the person she knew and loved. She hadn't been herself at all any of the days they had gone to visit her. Her eyes were empty, as were her words. Lauren closed her eyes and felt the ground moving under her feet. She was waiting for it all to be over.

...

When she opened her eyes, Lauren was no longer nine years old, nor was she in the elevator at the hospital. Instead, she was surrounded by a bunch of rowdy grade eight students packed into an elevator taking them all to the top of the CN Tower. There were people laughing and shouting, but it all sounded like and undefined roar in the back of Lauren's mind. Her hands were shaking and her mind was racing and she grew more and more anxious as the elevator climbed nearer to the top.

When they had first stopped in front of the enormous structure, Lauren had made the mistake of looking up. At that moment she felt that the whole towering structure was going to topple down on top of her. She knew it was irrational, as was her fear of heights, but that had never been enough to convince her not to be afraid.

The elevator stopped suddenly and Lauren was pushed outside by a crowd of kids impatient to see the ground from a height so great. Another girl grabbed on to her trembling arm and pulled her over to the window where she could see all of Toronto down below. It was almost too much to look at, so she closed her eyes for a moment then blindly followed the rest of the group down a small set of stairs to another observatory.

After spending almost an hour suspended over one of the biggest cities in the country, the classes made their way back to the elevators before they made the last stop on the itinerary. When the doors to the elevator had closed, Lauren was packed in with all the other kids. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply, relieved. It was finally over.

...

Upon opening her eyes, Lauren found that she was no longer in the elevator of the CN Tower, but in a hotel elevator in Ohio. Even the enclosed space reeked of that hotel smell that you can't help but wrinkle your nose at. Stranger than the hotel scent even, was the fact that Lauren was standing there with the rest of her family all of whom were dressed in bathing suits. She had wrapped herself in a towel, but somehow she was still shivering. There were a few other people in the elevator too, and they also appeared as though they were headed for the pool, wherever that was.

When the elevator reached the lobby, everyone made their way out and spread like roots in a multitude of directions. There were people lounging in chairs all over the lobby, people in business suits, people with their families, people in uniform, but no one else was wearing a bathing suit. Awkward would have been a fitting description of the scene.

Reluctantly, Lauren followed her parents into a pool room which smelled quite strongly of chlorine and moldy towels. There were at least 50 other people there, sliding down waterslides, splashing one another, laughing at the odd contraption with the metal monkeys who dumped coconuts full of water on your head. Everyone was having a great time. The only exception was Lauren's family. Her mother and sisters were discussing how much time they had and what they wanted to do before they left and her father stood sternly by a plastic table scrolling through e-mails on his Blackberry. Lauren was standing there still shivering despite the heated atmosphere of the pool room.

Contemplating what she was going to do for only a moment before speaking, Lauren excused herself to go back up to the room and change. She said she didn't feel like going in the water. No, not even for a few minutes. Once she was given the key, she made her way back to the elevator, wrapped tightly in her towel in order to prevent any more embarrassment. Thankfully, the elevator was empty this time. The ride seemed somehow longer though. Biting her tongue so as not to let any emotion show, Lauren made her way back to the room, changed and grabbed a book to read. She paused for a few moments before closing the door behind her.

In the elevator she closed her eyes and waited for the ride to be done. When she opened them again, she was back in the present.