The next day, discharge went as discharge goes during a pandemic.  I got the call telling me to come to the hospital, park in a particular lot, and then wait for a second call before pulling up to the door where I would meet David.  I put the suitcase in the car and filled my backpack with books and magazines and snacks.  I studied the route to the nursing home and I set up the GPS on my phone.  I drove to the hospital and sat in the car, not reading, not eating, trying to breathe, staring out the windshield at a perfect October day that I barely saw.  Would it seem to David that I was doing exactly what family members are always accused of doing to their “loved ones” – handing him off to a nursing home staff and then leaving him there, not even visiting?  The doctor had ruled that I couldn’t take him home because I couldn’t provide the safety and care he needed.  I couldn’t go into the nursing home with him or visit because it was in lockdown.  How much of those constraints David understood, there was just no way of knowing.  He would feel dropped off and abandoned.  I felt like a failure.  I felt like a criminal.

Since I wouldn’t be able to visit him in the nursing home – the social worker had told me that it had no provision for “essential caregivers” – I wouldn’t know what kind of care he was receiving.  I could transport him to same-day doctor appointments, but leaving the facility for any other reason meant the fourteen-day quarantine.  If I somehow figured out from those rare car trips or from phone calls that he wasn’t receiving the care he needed (and was paying for out of savings), what would we do?  What were the chances that the nursing homes on my list would have an opening?  The problem wasn’t beds; there were beds, in some cases because residents had died of COVID.  But staff had left, or were out with COVID, or had died, and staffing shortages meant that nursing homes couldn’t accept as many residents as they had beds for. 

Did David need to stay in a skilled nursing facility?  How much mobility had he regained?  How much PT had he had in the hospital?  Was there another option I’d dismissed too quickly?  Could I rent an apartment for him and patch together enough home care staffing, in this pandemic, to provide the care he needed?  Even if I could, was the COVID risk too great?  Would we be right back in this car, with this suitcase, in a month or two? 

If all this hadn’t happened in 2020, I would have started shaping Plans B and C.  As matters stood, I couldn’t see any workable alternative. 

After a couple of hours, the discharge nurse called me and told me to drive to the door.  Someone rolled David’s wheelchair to the car and helped him in.  I started the car and moved out of the loading zone, and then parked while we both wept.  Did they explain? I asked.  David couldn’t or didn’t answer.  We wiped our eyes and noses, and I started the car.  We talked only a little on our way to the nursing home.  I’d clipped my remote mic on his shirt so that his soft-spoken words would stream directly into my hearing aid, but the situation crushed language right out of us.  Only the GPS spoke. 

When we got to the nursing home, I pulled into a parking spot, turned off the car, and took David’s hand.  I won’t be able to visit until they start allowing “essential caregivers,” I told him.  I’ll try to get that device set up so we can talk to each other every morning.  If that doesn’t work, we’ll use the phone.  I hate that this is happening this way.  “It’s not your fault,” David murmured.  Soon a worker came to the car with a wheelchair and maneuvered David into it.  Another took his suitcase.  I said goodbye and watched him disappear into a building I’d never entered and wouldn’t enter for months.

The admission office was the space between the outer and inner doors of the entrance.  People kept squeezing by while I filled out paperwork.  I had brief meetings with a nurse and a social worker.  “He has Lewy Body Dementia,” I kept saying.  “There are meds that doctors commonly prescribe for patients with dementia that he absolutely cannot take.  Here’s the list.”  They nodded and handed me more forms to sign.