It all started when I asked the hairdresser why she came to the hospital. She told us about her doctor’s appointment and how her medication was worse than the disease and the disease is pretty bad. The poor girl was HIV positive.

We just stared at her pitifully. She told us to stop because everyone always felt sorry for her and it didn’t change anything. She told us she wished she never got infected in the first place. I could hear the anger in her voice. She went from the chatty, joking woman to a bitter woman in seconds. And I really couldn’t blame her. I’ve seen one child die from AIDS and it was horrible.

She had only found out three months ago, after she caught an infection. She couldn’t understand how she got it. Of course she panicked. And she told us that she was less concerned about herself and her first thought was for her husband. She knew she had to tell him and that he had to be tested.

We asked her how he took the news.

She told us he said he should have told her sooner. Can you believe that? He knew and didn’t tell her. He also didn’t tell her he was having an affair with a man for eight months. What a bloody bastard! I was angry for the poor woman. And she said they had been having sex more than ever because she wanted a child.

We were silent for a while. I think all of us forgot we were trapped in the lift.

The nurse went next. At first she just complained about everyone in the world. She listed a few horrible people that didn’t even care they’ve ruined our lives. Then she told us her sad story. When she was fifteen, her older sister went missing. Their family searched for years but knew she had to be dead. She was sure her sister would never have left them for so long without contacting them in some way. It tore their family apart. Her step-dad left and her mum went insane and had to be cared for because she couldn’t care for herself anymore. And she only turned sixty this year.

I asked if the police had stopped looking and she said something that shocked me, she thought she had found her sister’s killer. Of course we asked her how.

She explained she found a pair of earrings that had belonged to her, a pair she had made herself so she knew they were hers. Her sister had borrowed them the day she went missing. She told us she thought about those earrings a lot and at one point even convinced herself that if she had never lent the earrings to her sister, maybe her sister wouldn’t have gone missing. We just sat there quietly. Listening. Shocked.

She explained that she eventually became a nurse; partly to care for her mum and perhaps it was because she thought she was meant to catch her sister’s killer.

We asked an obvious question. How did you find him?

She explained she unbelievably started to work for him. The company she worked for asked her to fill in on a temporary assignment when one of the nurses became ill. On the third day of caring for the old man, she came across her earrings. She knew they were hers because when one of the stones fell out, she had to hot-glue it back in and use green string to keep everything together. She could still see the green string. She took them home with her.

So did you confront him? Ask him about your sister?

No.

We couldn’t believe it. The hairdresser was ready to beat the sorry arse right then and there. I guess she was no longer needed on her temporary assignment and was assigned to another older couple. She told us that eventually she did go back and ask about the earrings. He said they belonged to his mother and had the nerve to ask for them back. In fact, he laughed at her. Although he never confessed to anything, the nurse knew he had done it. It was the way he looked at her, and the way he probably looked at all women, like they were his toys. Dirty old bastard.

Again we sat quiet.

Then they turned to me. I had to have a story too. Compared with their stories, my life situation seemed like a bed of roses. Thinking about it now, I should have kept my mouth shut.

I told them my husband was cheating on me and how I had caught him two weeks before. How I couldn’t bring myself to say anything and how he acted so in love with me but cheated on me with another woman.

I became more and more angry the longer I continued my story. I could tell the others were getting angry as well. The longer we stayed in the lift, the worse the situation became for us. We went from trying to stay positive to slowly bringing out the worst in each other. I knew then that we would walk out of the lift changed women. I just didn’t know how changed we would be.

Did you know we actually came up with a name? We called ourselves the Otis Group. Otis, for the man who invented the lift. I guess in the end, it was his fault. He shouldn’t have invented such a shitty lift.

The hairdresser came up with the idea. Thinking about it now, I think she had come up with it long ago but could never find a situation where she could have so much privacy and such willing participants.

Such a simple sentence. “We should kill them, you know.”

We looked at her like she was joking, but I knew immediately that she wasn’t. The nurse didn’t want to because she was afraid of getting caught.

The hairdresser convinced us that if we were smart about it, we wouldn’t get caught. It would be like the movie, and we would have to commit each other’s murders. And then, we would have to alibi each other out. If we keep our mouths shut, they could never prove a thing.

For only about fifteen minutes did we fight her on it. Fifteen. Meanwhile, we considered it. We must have because it didn’t take long for both of us to decide to go along with it. Within minutes we had a plan and a time line. How easy it is to plan a murder. The murder of three people. Three people we knew everything about.

The hairdresser said she would go first, commit the first murder and she chose the serial killer. She said she had nothing to lose.

A few minutes later, before I had time to change my mind, the doors opened. We had been in the lift for over four hours. We didn’t speak to each other much after we exited the lift, but it was like we shared our whole lives.

For some reason I thought that if I returned to my normal life, this would all go away. But then I read the papers the day the serial killer died. I hadn’t realized I had fallen to the floor until one of the nurses asked if I was all right. I picked up the paper and quickly folded it so that they wouldn’t see what I was reading, but for some reason, I always felt they knew. I wasn’t even guilty and I felt they knew. But I was guilty, wasn’t I? If I hadn’t agreed, no one would be hurt. It was my fault.

Later that night I watched The Talented Mr. Ripley and Strangers on a Train on my computer. I even kept my earphones on so as to keep it from my husband. I felt so ashamed. And in the film, it never turned out well. They got caught. I would get caught too. I couldn’t get some of the lines out of my head.

“She was a human being. Let me remind you that even the most unworthy of us has a right to life and the pursuit of happiness.”

“My theory is that everyone is a potential murderer.”

My blood pressure continues to go up. I’ve been getting pains in my chest. I had to get a fellow doctor to prescribe Cilazapril for me. Without proper sleep at night, it’s impossible to eat right and focus on what I have to do at work.

Patients are suffering. Last week I realized I prescribed antibiotics instead of birth control pills and had to ring up the female patient to come in for the correct prescription. I was lucky she hadn’t visited the chemist yet. I could have been completely discredited. When patients tell me their complaints, I can’t be absent. Sometimes the patient will stop talking and ask, “So, what do you think the issue is?” and I can’t even remember the complaint.