In my previous job, I worked as a field service engineer maintaining ophthalmic devices. In this role, I needed to be an IT specialist, mechanic, furniture mover, and truck driver. For some reason, they found it very hard to get anyone with all the requisite skills to apply! I quite liked the job at a base level, but they were screwing me over with the pay, so I left after the latest salary review wasn’t at all to my liking. But that’s another story.

One day, I was called out to repair an optical device at a hospital. The unit was a portable slit lamp—a handheld device used to examine the eye. Like most hospitals I visited, the biomedical department was tucked away in the bowels of the building, involving lots of long corridors and doorways to get through. This time, I was escorted in because I’d never have found the place otherwise.

They showed me to a bench with the offending device, and I got to work. It was a pretty simple fix—just a loose internal lens that needed to be glued in place. The issue was that the glue we used required UV light to cure, and I didn’t have a lamp with me. No problem; we usually just take the devices out into the sun for a minute, and the glue sets pretty quickly.

I looked around—no windows. I looked down the hall…no windows.

“Excuse me, I know this is going to sound silly, but where might I find the sun?”

I was directed to the loading bay, just down the hall and through a couple of doors. I gingerly carried my patient, being very careful not to bump the lens, which was positioned just right. I found the loading dock, but…no sun!

The hospital walls loomed upwards, giving me only the smallest sliver of sky. I could tell there was sunshine somewhere, but just not here. So I started walking, both hands keeping the device steady while also looking out for trucks and whatnot. Eventually, I found a welcoming beam of sunlight calling out to me. I walked into it and lifted the slit lamp into its rays like I was presenting a chalice to the gods of fire.

I stood there for a minute to ensure the job was done, trying to look casual and normal to the few people who passed me. But it’s not easy to look normal in that situation, so I just stood there like an idiot until the job was done. I found my way back, finished the repair, and tested the unit. Everything worked, and I packed up my stuff.

Later that day, I went online and found a nice, powerful UV torch that would handle the job without me roaming the halls looking for the sun like some reverse vampire.