Elevator Crystallography

"Livin' it up while I'm goin' down." -- Aerosmith

After an hour of reading scans in the fifth-floor CT suite of the outpatient pavilion, I wait entirely too long for the elevator. When the doors finally open, there's room for one and I gladly occupy it. The car descends one floor, the doors open, and the people on the other side turn away disappointed. It descends another floor and the doors open to reveal a man who looks like a cross between Howdy Doody and an excitable puppy, grinning madly and bouncing on the balls of his feet. Of course, he tries to wedge his way in.

"Come on, people! We're all in this together!" he half-shouts as we all jostle to give him room. "This is a New York elevator! Things can get more dense! It's a matter of engineering!"

This piques my interest, so I shift my bag to buy him a few more inches. He squishes in front of me and the doors close. "Yeah!" he says. "That's it! We've achieved optimal atomic packing!"

"With no vacancies on the lattice," I respond with a smirk.

The man stops bouncing for a moment, tilts his head. "Though it would work better if we were all hexagons," he ventures, his voice tinged with curiosity.

"Or face-centered cubes," I offer.

"Ohhh!" says my sparring partner. "She knows how to play, doesn't she?"

The doors open on the first floor, he spots someone familiar in the lobby, and he bounds off to offer a greeting and a hug. I walk out to 53rd Street to wait for my transport back to clinic.