The door from the outside world to the waiting area at the dialysis facility is power-assisted. You're supposed to use a button either inside or out to open it. Operationally, this doesn't necessarily happen. There's a pushbar on the inside, so people going out don't really have to bother with the button. And the door frequently doesn't close properly, so people coming in often don't have to bother with the button either.
Today, it was closing properly, and this was a problem. Because what it wasn't doing was opening properly. It would open maybe a quarter of the way and then close itself again. With the pushbar or the handle, a person could override this, of course, but it wasn't exactly what anyone was expecting. As one of the patients in the waiting room said, somebody could get hurt.
A lady with a walker was trying to get out of the clinic part to the waiting room and was having trouble with that door just because doors are heavy things to move with a walker. I ran up and opened and held the door for her, and then went and opened and held the door to the outside, too, since there's no way she would be able to cope with that. Another lady with a walker came after her from the waiting area, so I held the door for her, too.
The door is set up so that after a while (15 seconds, say) the power assistance gives up and the door should close itself. This happened while the first lady was going out and I had to hold the door open with muscle power (such as it is) until the second lady made her way out. And somehow-- that fixed it. Door stopped trying to close itself partway open, but worked perfectly normally again. People had been holding it open before, of course, so I have no idea why this time would do the trick. I did hold it open longer and farther open than most people had; maybe that was it. But I like to think that it really was the power of the good deed.
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