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How long is the bond between mother and daughter expected to hold up when the two become trapped in a steel tomb? How long until love is replaced by a primal need to survive? Longer than two days, it seems. But who knows what would have happened had Beata Bartoszewicz and her mother been trapped in that Niles, Illinois, elevator for a third day.
The two, hired to clean the two-storey office just prior to its holidays closure, stepped onto an elevator in a little-travelled wing of the building. The doors closed, but the elevator didn’t budge. All buttons, even the alarm, were unresponsive.
“I was close to thinking I was going to die,” said 25-year-old Beata. The two didn’t bother screaming for help because they figured no one would hear. Unable to pry open the doors themselves, they spent two days living like gerbils, with only two cough drops and six Aspirin to sate their hungers. Before the stronger of the two had need to kill and eat the weaker, they heard a voice. A physical therapist from the building had stopped into his office. The Bartoszewiczes called out and, an hour later, were freed from their ground-floor nightmare.
by Scott Saxon
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