Harry in Lockdown

Sometimes people fall through the cracks. It isn't done on purpose, even if it can seem like it at times. Harry found this out, or didn't as the case was, when he told the woman - a local nurse - to get out of his house and never come back. He knew she had, several times, but he'd been out, or hiding in his garage. He didn't like being told what to do. He was 80 years old, for God's sake, old enough to know better than some kid in a uniform telling him what's best for him.

Harry's year had been the worst he could remember, except this was the root of all of his 'problems', his memory was not what it was and he was beginning to get yesterday mixed up with who knows when? The truth was by the time COVID-19 had shut down the British Isles, Harry had already been blighted by a run of bad luck he couldn't quite comprehend, when he was in a comprehending kind of mood.

Shortly after Christmas, his wife, Margaret? Was it Margaret? He wasn't as sure as he once was. Might it have been Mary? Anyhow, his wife had taken a nasty fall and what seemed likely to be a couple of days in the local hospital, turned into a nursing home. Quite why Harry couldn't look after her, he didn't quite understand. Something about 'his diagnosis', which made little or no sense to him. Whose diagnosis, he'd ask? That seemed to be one of the problems, apparently.

In truth, Harry had been suspected of having the early stages of senile dementia, but had managed to make the doctor think he wasn't at the stage where he needed to slow down or stop doing things. Harry was a fit man; he'd never smoked and while he liked a drink, he was never an alcoholic or even a heavy drinker. The problem - a word he seemed to hear far too often - was that shortly after Margaret had her fall - her name was indeed Margaret, but Harry had called her Maggie for the 54 years they had been married - and subsequent failing health, he was deemed unsuitable to care for his own wife and she, of complete sound mind, had forbidden her husband to drive to see her. In fact, Harry's driving licence had been taken away after a minor accident in January he had caused, so the only way he could go the 35 miles to see his wife was if someone took him.

There was also the dog. Harry loved his dog, but during the week he spent almost entirely at the hospital because of his wife's fall, he completely forgot about his 13-year-old dog. It was removed from his residence by the RSPCA and a letter was left explaining why. Harry picked up the letter placed it on the side table and promptly forgot it was there. The positive thing, you could say, was that within a few days, the dog became as distant a memory as his long-departed parents and when he did think of the dog, he invariably thought of ones they had had many years ago. Within a few weeks, his car, his dog and his wife had been taken away from him and he believed they now wanted to take away his freedom; but it might have been so much easier or better had it not been for the virus that Harry seemed determined to ignore.

Of course, by the time the coronavirus found its way into the mainstream of planetary life and the country was shut down, there was no one to drive Harry to see his wife and no one to care for him when he decided that he wasn't going to be told to stay indoors for 12 weeks. "There is no way I'm doing that," he shouted at the girl in the nurse's uniform and he told her to get out of his house and never come back. He knew he didn't feel bad about it, but as March turned into April and the sun came out, the last thing the old man wanted to do was be cooped up inside his bungalow, whatever advice the girl had given him, which he had ignored, and now no longer resided in his memory at all. He'd spent all of his life working outside, he was sure of it, so he was going to wander around the village and chat to all the people he hadn't been able to while his wife had been keeping him at home.

Harry began to interpret his inability to get to see his wife with the belief she didn't want to see him, which wasn't true, she just realised he was a danger to everyone if he drove. Harry now remembered it as her telling him she never wanted to see him again and the way his mind was now working, that meant he was going to go and do what he wanted; see the people he had spent all of his life with in the village and get to know the ones who were new.

Buried at the front of his now scattershot memory was that people were trying to make him stay in. It seemed to him there were a lot of people telling him, from a distance, that he needed to go home unless he was going to the shop. He did go to the shop, not always. It seemed to some of the locals that when they explained the risk to Harry, he simply seemed to drift away from the conversation or wandered off, like a child bored with something. The fact he was told repeatedly by different people made no difference to him; he simply avoided those people - the enemy - and went in search of new people to talk to. He loved talking to people, he didn't understand why they didn't want to talk to him.

Did Harry understand what a pandemic was? Probably not and even if he once understood the danger one posed, it was no longer something that inhabited his brain. It was something affecting the rest of the world and even cases of coronavirus in the village failed to make him comprehend the risk to himself and indirectly to others. If he caught it - and he was almost trying despite not knowing - he could prove to be fatal to those who he came into contact with. Except, that wouldn't happen, because he wouldn't get it.

Do you see the problem? He was in a place of denial but only because his brain no longer understood exactly what it was denying. This was no longer about others, apart from their intent to stop him from going about his business, which now as April slipped into May, was shuffling the streets, in the same clothes, looking more dishevelled and unhappier because the more he tried the more people consciously began avoiding him, crossing the road, locking their doors, closing their gates. There had been instances where he'd simply wandered onto people's property, because he thought someone who hadn't lived there for 40 years still did.

While the world twitched at their curtains and became like honorary members of the Stasi, reporting rule breakers, the kind who, if they were social isolating the way they were supposed to, would never enter their personal spheres, Harry was ignored. People felt sorry for him, but didn't want to help him. Except, they did, they just couldn't because the advice he received, the conversations he had, the shouted abuse from people he didn't know, just compounded his belief - his paranoia - that they were all out to get him. The rest of the world's problems were something he was not even aware of. So the neighbours and locals accepted the wandering old man, the way you might an unwanted tramp sleeping on your local park bench, but without acknowledging, condoning or condemning - it was as it was.

Harry's fate was now down to chance. Maybe he'd be lucky; maybe he wouldn't. The problems arise if he wasn't, but there was no obvious path; no way of knowing who or what he might come in contact with and short of having him committed or sent to a care home - Harry and Margaret had no children - he had fallen through those cracks in the system. Whatever outcome suited the rest of the village was going to be bad for Harry. Do you inform the police and even if you did, what chances of impressing on him the importance, to everyone else, that he stays inside and lets the local resilience group do his shopping, collect his medicine or simply drop by - at an appropriate distance - to talk and see if he's able to cope?

Locals have watched the old man deteriorate over the last few months and the underlying feeling rises in all of them; they are watching the last act of a defiant, but mentally-challenged old man, heading towards an inevitable death, either from the virus or his own diminished abilities. Harry had become a Dead Man Shuffling and people were afraid of him. This was something that would end badly, through no real fault of a system or a person. In the time of an unprecedented plague, responsibilities and duty of care are lost in the unrelenting face of a creeping death, picking off victims even if they never catch the disease...