A man from Kerala, India, was stuck in a hospital elevator for 42 hours and didn’t have any food or water. He thought he was going to die there.
Ravindran Nair, 59, got in on Saturday afternoon to see a doctor and didn’t come out until Monday morning. An elevator operator found him.
Nair is now in the hospital, getting help for back pain and dehydration.
At first, his family thought he was at work, but they later called the cops and reported him missing.
The state government suspended three techs and started an investigation. The health minister of the state and officials from the Government Medical College, Thiruvananthapuram, have told Nair they’re sorry.
The emergency number in the lift didn’t work. He also tried calling anyone else he could think of, including his hospital-working wife, Sreelekha, but the calls wouldn’t go through.
He panicked and began banging on the lift doors to get someone’s attention. That is when he dropped his phone, breaking it.
He pried open the doors to get a little air. He paced around inside the cubicle and kept pushing the alarm bell, hoping that it would go off and alert someone. As the hours went by, he had no idea if it was day or night because it was so dark inside. He slept in a corner and used another to relieve himself.
A few months ago, Nair started going to the hospital often after he hurt his back when he fell in the bathroom. He and his wife went to the doctor on Saturday and got an X-ray of his back. They forgot to bring the blood test results home when the doctor asked to see them.
Nair pushed the ill-fated elevator’s button; it went up, but it lurched down with a thud and got stuck between the first and second floors. He had no idea that he was about to be scared, isolated, and alone for nearly two days.
Kerala’s health department fired three hospital workers for not doing their jobs properly.
