A chorus line of imagined catastrophes high-kicked in my head. Gorsebrook was closing — after I had given our bed away at Seaside. They were ending their day program — after I had given home care the heave-ho and organized the entire upcoming year around it. They’d gone bankrupt — their accountant had absconded to the Canary Islands. They were awash in scandal — one of their hulking, hairy-fingered orderlies had been discovered in a resident’s room engaging in —

“A resident,” she told me, “has gone missing today.”

“Oh my god,” I said after a moment.

“We discovered the absence this morning, quite promptly. He was at breakfast, so it was only about an hour before we realized he was gone.”

Marlene was hitting those self-justifying was-es pretty hard. She was using me, this unexpected phone call from a potential but as yet unconfirmed client, to practise her spiel — what she’d say to other families, to her board members, to whomever else she was accountable to. I was the first to hear this little speech, and all the kinks had clearly not yet been worked out.

“The police were notified immediately. We are speaking with everyone who would have had contact with the resident, retracing his steps . . .”

“How — um . . .” I said.

“I beg your pardon, Karen?”

“What is the extent, of . . .” I swallowed. I’d lost all sense of the acceptable terminology and had to stop myself from yelling How retarded is he? down the phone. “. . . Of his impairment?”

“Do you mean is he —”

“Is he like Kelli, basically, is what I’m asking. Does he — like, for example . . .” I was struggling to get the words out again. Because my heart had started to pound from the moment I’d said Kelli. “Can he ask and answer questions?”

“Jeremy,” said Marlene, “loves to walk, and he’s very friendly. But he — no, if you’re asking could he find his way home by himself, if he could ask for directions, or tell someone that he’s lost, I’m afraid the answer is no.”

“How could this happen?” I asked.

“Oh, Karen,” said Marlene again. And this was the least reassuring Oh, Karen I’d heard from Marlene yet. An Oh, Karen near tears.

There was no getting the bed back from Seaside. We would have to go on their waiting list, Deanna told me when I called. And, she stressed, we’d be starting from the bottom. The very bottom.

I called other places I had not been nearly as enthusiastic about as I had been about Gorsebrook — even the grisly Fenwick Centre — and they all told me a version of the same thing. Bottom of the waiting list — the very bottom. An indefinite wait. And none of them offered Gorsebrook’s day program. The only place with a bed immediately available was, no surprise, the opulent Barnbarroch Manor, which I called out of desperation just to confirm that the fees were as entirely out of my range as I suspected. They were. And when I asked if there were any kind of government subsidies available, I could hear the administrator I spoke to swallow what I guessed was a guffaw.