car

2 results for (book:sdpc AND heading:introduct AND stemmed:car)

SDPC Introduction Valerie metaphor grief hospital death

‘My bursting out of the elevator car, which was lifting me toward the house on the roof of the hospital building, and a new reality, is a close thing as I force my way free. I’m delayed by fixing the mechanism; repairing it means I still have things to do on the earth, as does the lady who was with me in the car. My almost waiting too long to get out of the car also stands for my grief for Jane, and for my intense questioning and speculating about ‘where she is’ now. I’m sure that she lives. I want to know more — yet I’m not ready to die now in order to find out. I feel sad, writing this and thinking of her.

‘It was a warm starlit night,’ I later wrote to a friend, ‘just beautiful, and as I got out of the car and looked up into that depthless sky I felt Jane right there, above the car. She’d followed me home. “Thank you, Jane,” I said aloud, and went into the house.

Then I was in an elevator car inside the building, and rising toward the house on the roof. Jane wasn’t with me. Another, older lady was having trouble repairing a small mechanism that was fastened to the wall beside the car’s door. I offered to fix it for her; this involved my turning some large screws into place by hand. While I was doing so, the elevator stopped at a floor and the door opened. The lady left, and I hurriedly inserted the last few screws while the door stayed open. Just as I finished — or perhaps nearly so — the door began to close. I leaped toward it. I wedged my shoulder between the door and its frame and forced the door open enough so that I could squeeze out into a hallway of the hospital. The door shut behind me.

SDPC Part Two: Chapter 11 Cunningham Miss starlings killing Rah

In the meantime, the doctor got into his car and drove away. [...]