No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

My friend Ginnie fell and ended up being loaned a walker for last night from the walk-in clinic.  This morning I dropped off the walker I had for Mike at her place and offered to return the loaner to the clinic since I was going right by there in the process of running another errand.

You might think, as I had, that this was a pretty easy thing to do.  Pull into the clinic parking lot, take the walker into the front desk, say, "Here you go, thanks!" and be on my merry way.

HA!

I got as far as the be-on-my-merry-way part.  The nurse at the clinic told me to go to the main desk for the whole facility.  The guy sitting at the desk told me I needed to go to the Good Samaritan's office.  "Go to the end of this hall and turn right for the elevators, go down to the basement, turn right, then left and take the first hall on the left, blah, blah, blah."  For one thing I have trouble with left-right directionality and by the time I found the basement/"ground floor" I had forgotten the entire sequence of left-rights anyway.

I saw a rehab desk and asked there.  The women directed me back past the elevators and then to a left turn.  I guess I took the wrong left turn because I found myself in a little maze of storage closets and hallways.  Fortunately some concerned cafeteria worker noticed me wondering aimlessly where I was not supposed to be--all this time carrying the walker--and she kindly yelled out, "Hey! Hey, lady!  Where are you going?  I mean, can I help you?"

It turned out I was not that far from the Good Samaritan office.  There were two gentlemen in that little office and the looked at the walker and said, "That's not ours."  One guy called the walk-in clinic, but it was a different crew from the night before.  They didn't know what to do about it.  The GS guy said, "Your friend needed that so she probably still does, just take it for her since nobody knows where it is supposed to go."

No, no, I didn't think that was right.  So GS guy ends up walking me down to the Rehab area and a there woman ran over and said, "Oh, yes.  A women came down yesterday and borrowed that.  It belongs over on our wall."  She took it off my hands and hung it up with several others.

As GS guy and I left, he said to me, "I don't trust her for a second.  I wish you had just taken it for your friend."

Now I am just hopping my friend does not get a call demanding the walker be returned because I would find it hard to retrace all those steps.

Where's Olga??

I am glad I was the one taking it back instead of Ginnie.  At least I didn't need to have a walker to complete the wild goose chase of returning a walker.