One time years ago I was in the elevator of my work building and this guy got on. He was breathing hard and looked a little crazed, and he went and stood behind me and took out his cell phone, and when some dude does that and you’re a not very burly femme-presenting person alone in an elevator you tend to go on alert, so I was paying a LOT of attention when he said, “Hi, it’s me. The doctor says it isn’t cancer. He says it’s another spleen.” Then the elevator reached the ground floor and the doors opened and he ran out like he was on fire.
Please go on this journey with me. The doctor said it wasn’t cancer. It was another spleen.
So the guy leaves the elevator and I’m just, you know, my day just didn’t recover. And I kept thinking about it and thinking about it. And on my last day at that job, I was in the elevator riding down at the end of my workday with my little box of office supplies, and HE GETS ON THE ELEVATOR AGAIN WITH ME. He looks much less crazed. We were again alone. I may have dreamed the whole thing.
Because, look. I worked in a skyscraper in downtown San Francisco. There were hundreds of people in my building, spread across twenty floors. The odds of me seeing him again after that first time were nuts. And I hadn’t stopped playing that conversation over in my mind. So I thought, fuck it.
Me: “Hi, uh, so listen. A couple months ago you were on this elevator? And you made a phone call?”
Him, slightly wary: “Okay?”
Me: “So I didn’t mean to listen in but you know, this is close quarters.”
Him, flat: “Uh-huh.”
Me: “So I heard you telling someone that the doctor said it wasn’t cancer, it was another spleen. And like, it’s none of my business, but today’s my last day in this building and I will never have another chance, so I have to ask. WHO in your life has a second spleen?”
The guy looked at me for a second, and then he burst out laughing, and he said, “Oh, yeah, that was my dog.”
This is the second weirdest thing that has ever happened to me and I think about it every damn day.