D 24 Capture and Release

Capture and Release, that is how it is done in the wild. Go out get an innocent victim, captured it, give it medical treatment and then release it back into the wilds.

The problem is that they never consider the consequences of not being allowed freedom nor if their habitant is still available when done.

My mother used to do this to me all the time, have me put in a hospital or a trip to a grandparent and then move, she thought it funny to see if I could find my way home. It also caused my father to loose a lot of his jobs and friends.

Now after going through the exercise of being confined in a single room with no outlet and no fresh air. I am being told to wait another day and another day and another day.

Then the call comes at night to be ready in the morning to move out, but where? no answer.
The next morning waiting for the call, the nurse does not call but the county, go outside and wait in the parking lot. for what.

NO answer, I have to take the bags I did not ask for nor carry up the stairs, down the stairs one by one. I cant use an elevator nor am I not fully capable, I use a walking device due to a back injury.

I make it down the stairs in time to be at the main entrance of the hotel in the back. They have no clients due to the virus shutdown. They should be grateful for the money paid to them to care for the needs of those of us in quarantine. They are not.

We are texting, do I see the vehicle? What vehicle? is it a van, a car, a bus? no answer.
Am I in the back parking lot? Yes, yes, yes!
I notice that there is a side parking lot as well we people are milling around, so I trot around with my luggage and my stick.
Is there a vehicle waiting for me? One group gets in and waltzes away in a van. I am still waiting to know what to do.

Did I understand to be in the back parking lot? There is no one in the back parking lot but people in the side, it is a large complex next to the golf course now closed down and the smaller convention center and mall. Both are not open.
Where are you? In the back parking lot!
Wait, it is 11 not 10 when they are coming. GO back!
If the door had not closed behind me if I was not already down the stairs with my suitcases, and no I am not going back up those stairs.

So I wait an hour in the parking lot with a security guard to keep me company.
Eleven o clock comes and goes.
Then his walk y talk y starts going off.
They are looking for someone with my name. I have already given it to someone else.
I am not in my room, no I am waiting for transport.
Then again, someone is at the front desk, would I please come.
No I was told to wait in the back parking lot.

They cant come to me. I cant get to them. It is now too far, since I did not go through the courtyard but to the far end of the complex.
Again and again, the driver insists that I move to the front meanwhile I am still getting texts to be in the back parking lot.
With much regret a small red car drives around to the back. The woman is horrified to see my luggage. She did not know I had any, what did they think was waiting?
It is not a lot, only one large suitcase with wheels, and several smaller bags due to my bedding and my business bag also coming with me on this trip.
She sighs and sighs, I cant put it in the trunk for her, no. The security guard finally puts it in while I stuff the other two bags in the back seat.

Off we go, into never land. She drives according to the GPS, which is the wrong or longest way to get downtown.
Then she finds the new location, not the one I was residing waiting my turn for an apartment.
And then she wants me to get out on the street corner with my bags. I refuse.
The texting had stopped, even though I had asked where I was to go and then the driver has no clue as to what to do.
She is not allowed to throw me out but directed towards the back of the building to the loading docks. She does not want to do this and is trying to find someone to force me out  of the car. The building is closed in the front.

She finally goes around to the back, and ask street walkers what to do, they don't know they don't know. Why not drive around and see what is going on. She begins to turn around.
I complain, just go around the building. Please. She reluctantly drives a little bit further. And then finds a yellow vests who agrees we are at the right place and pulls my stuff out of the car.
And drives off.
I am not at the right place. I have to talk to people, I have to pull my stuff up an incline, I have to wait for someone.

No one comes.
I see a nurse go by and jump at her, where is the check in station? She does not know but does know I have to go through a screening. Fine, where?
Another small journey and another wait. What to do with someone who jumps out of a car without instructions?
They decide to check me into their system and my name pops up on a missing list. The groups are separated and they did not know where I had disappeared..
We had called and called. No one answered. Now I am here and they think I am AWOL.
Sigh.

I wait and move through the screening. It is a large room for a lot of people. I am the only one there. It takes awhile to go through the stations. I am not really passing but since I have a negative tests, they have to let me in.
Reminder to self, get a copy of it.
Now there is no place to go until someone walks me to the real check-in space.
Someone walks by that I recognize. Hey!

Oh, there you are, just go down the hall here and wait.
Huh, trot, trot, another door, and another station but it is full of people.
Maybe.

He comes back with his lunch, he was on his way to lunch and sits down.
Nice guy.

He eats his lunch while I go through the paper work.
Finally, checked in and given a box with a sandwich and coke.
It is a cot with a thin sheet and not to my liking. I was not expecting anything else with this situation and no place to call home and no one to phone since everyone ran away when my mother began going nuts with her brain cancer.

I negotiate my bags to the middle of the room. And I find a sympathetic person who agreed the cots legs where never going to touch the ground at the same time and was given a different location, right next to the walk to the bathroom but not in the middle.

Fine.
I unroll my yoga mat with a lot of attention, and place it on top of the cot and then spread the sheet on top. I pull out my cover and place my pillow on top.
Cute.

After years of working, I have no work history and now unemployment.
After years of going to school and earning degrees, I have no employable market.
After a car accident no my fault, I have no disability.
And now, after turning myself over to the system in order to get medical treatment and signing into a housing program, I have no housing.
A cot, in the middle of the new convention center with my suitcase parked at one end and my business bag hugging the other one.

I have no time to waste but to go to check my mail before they close.
Everyday, I have an errand in the essentials only system.
One day mail. one day, locker renewal, if you don't show up they assume you don't need it and remove your belongings, one day to do my laundry which has been waiting for almost a month, one day to go get my prescriptions I could not get on the phone. One day to finish my shopping list of necessities before they decide we have to go into complete shutdown.

But I was released into the wilds, with out my isolation unit and now have to social distance with more than a hundred souls under one roof. There are more rooms and more souls, amounting to nearly a thousand. I know this because I now have to walk around the huge building to get to the front and walk without a bus pass to my destinations.

Except for the one bus trip to the pharmacy. They don't take cash, and there was no machine. I made it but with the cooperation of the bus drivers and the paid for ticket at the end of my trip to show as I once again walked all the way around the huge complex to the back of the building to my loading dock entrance.