Chaz:

The hotel lobby was a scramble of bodies; arms and legs and startled faces. It was as if everyone knew something horrible was coming and they didn’t want it to get too close. They turned away as I ran past, as if that could protect them. As if I were the hurtling bullet, the fast-advancing plague.

As if I wore the mask of death.

Just like the crowd outside, I had to push my way through a slow-moving herd, human flesh the boundary between me and my goal.

The elevators. Across shining marble floors, between Grecian pillars. A pair of twin doors stood closed, yet expectant, like the lid on a wicked jack-in-the-box, ever ready to spring open and reveal some predatory monster within.

I ran. Skidded to a halt in front of the doors, punched the UP button with my palm. Glanced impatiently at the stairway door to the left.

Should I wait or should I run up the stairs?

There are times when your brain moves faster than your body, when you see your life five times quicker than it really happens, when you see the beginning and the end, almost simultaneously. Then it loops around again, this time with a different, and usually much worse, ending.

The loop kept playing through my head, and each time the stairs seemed more logical. I could scale those steps in a few seconds, I could be halfway there before the elevator doors opened, I was wasting time. And yet, some part of me knew this was a false conclusion. There was no way I could run up thirty-three flights and beat the elevator.

I had to wait.

And waiting was killing me.

I prayed it wasn’t killing anyone else at the same time.

In that never-ending moment, as I stood waiting, my mind tumbled over all the safe words I had heard throughout my life: words like love and hope and faith. Every single one seemed to cause a sharp, jagged disconnect, to force me to continue to search for the perfect word, the one that would stop the tumble, the one that would stop the inward implosion that was going to drive me to madness if I had to wait another second.

Adrenaline slugged through my body; I leaned forward, willing time to push through the envelope, to reach the next second.

Waiting for the elevator doors to fly open.

Hoping that one word would finally win the lottery and stop the tumble.