I was late to work this morning for a couple of reasons. For one thing, parking around here is always a challenge. There’s one lot that I used to use all the time that was hardly ever full, but I think it’s been discovered. It seems to fill up around ten minutes to eight, so if I’m even a little late that’s out.
There’s a parking ramp about fifteen minutes walk from my office that frequently has empty spaces. Of course, I tend to go there when I’m already a bit late and the nearer parking has filled up, so the added walk time usually means I’m going to be the last one in to the office.
Today there was an added complication. As I was walking past the driveway for the research buildings, a large brown van pulled up next to me. The driver rolled down her window and asked me for directions to the Blue Pillar admissions building. She’d been driving in circles for half an hour and couldn’t find the place. She was bringing in an elderly man (he was sitting silentli in the front passenger seat) and they were already late for a dental appointment.
I’ve worked in the hospital complex for a couple of years, and I knew that the reason she couldn’t find it was because it didn’t exist. The Blue Pillar wasn’t a building, it was a prominent feature of a hallway in the main hospital building. I told her that, and directed her toward patient parking. She was very flustered, and things weren’t helped by the schmendrick who started honking at us for holding up traffic, but she headed on her way.
It’s not the first time someone has stopped to ask for directions. Pretty much everyone who works in the hospital has had a similar experience. The medical complex is exactly that. Complex. It’s been cobbled together over decades of building and remodeling. People are coming here from all over the state, and they’re already under stress.
I watched her go up the driveway to the turnaround and thought for a bit. I was about three minutes away from my office. She was flustered and dealing with morning rush hour traffic near a complex of nearly identical buildings. By this time, she’d gone around the traffic circle at the end of the driveway and was headed back my way. I flagged her down.
“If you’d like, I could probably ride with you and give better directions.”
It took us about ten minutes to get around the Medical Science Research Buildings, past the Cancer and Geriatrics Center and the Emergency entrance to the main admitting entrance. If I hadn’t been with her, she might have tried parking at every one of them. As it was, I helped her get the van situated with one of the parking attendants and pointed out the blue pillar down the hall from the information desk.
We parted ways, and I headed in to the office. A little late, but feeling good.
One of the projects that we’ve been working on for the past few weeks is a set of maps that people can download and print to help find things on the Medical Campus. The head of our department looked over some of our early drafts and was extremely enthusiastic. He was just hired last year and he told us that he wished these maps had been around then.
Maybe, in time, when someone stops to ask me directions, I’ll be able to just pop open my laptop or my PDA and wirelessly access the web page with the medical campus map on it…