The man in the room

There is a dripping tunnel, straight down. Metal ladder rungs are welded on one side. I don’t want to climb down it. I have come a long way. There is a pain in my mouth. This pain is what sent me on the journey. This pain is more tolerable than the thought of climbing down this wet hole. 

I want to reach this person, this person who is a professional, who is going to give me what I need, but the thought that I must make this unsavory passage to reach him frightens me. I turn to my compatriots for reassurance. It does present danger, right? Please, somebody else, feel what I feel, turn your back on this with me. But none of them do. They need the man in the room, too, even if that room is flooding. 

I leave and I return. I forgot something. I climb down the ladder. At the bottom, 40 feet down, the passage has a cement floor and a dirt arch for a ceiling. Water, three or four inches deep, sloshes between the base of the ladder and a plain white wooden door, like you’d see at the end of a hallway in a suburban home. Blue light leaks out of it. You feel that your compatriots are inside. You turn away from the door. A mellow-colored rug rolls in the churn of the water as it rises.