We weren't supposed to leave town.

The government orders have been very specific about that.

No travel between regions was allowed since the virus death rates had begun to climb again.

The world had been struggling to recover

as the virus had slowly receded. Life as we knew it had begun to resume as normal,

with the addition of masks and social distancing.

A vaccine had been fast-tracked and would be out in a year to a year and a half.

We all relaxed and let down our guard pretty quickly, thinking the masks and watered down hand sanitizer would keep us safe.

The economy reopened quicker than expected against the warnings of infectious disease experts.

Those experts quickly proved to be right as the rate of infection

suddenly skyrocketed again. As a security guard in a medium slash high security

mental health hospital I was deemed essential, so I had been continuing my full-time

shifts.

I patroled the hospital grounds, responded to Code Whites, violent patients, search Search for Missing Patience, Code Yellow's, and Documented

Everything in my Trusty Notepad.

It helped at the end of the day when I wrote my Shift Summary Report to have exact times and details written down to help fill

in any blanks in my memory.

I had been working full time for about two years, so I had managed to accrue a bit of vacation time, and by

mid-summer decided to take a trip up to the family cottage.

I'd bucked the time off long before, but I'd been debating whether we should go.

The hospital wasn't any busier than usual.

In fact, they'd been discharging people much more quickly than normal.

...