Yanci

Resident file · Thistledown Assisted Living · Unit 11, near the side door

Sixty-nine. Married. Her husband is named Gerald and he does not worry. She leaves the building constantly. Nobody is stopping her. Nobody has ever tried to stop her. That is precisely what she objects to.

Departure & retrieval record Kept by: the retriever · Never filed with anyone

411Departures

411Retrievals

0Locks on any door, ever

411Notes left. All kept.

Standing clarification · Posted at the side door · By her

On the subject of leaving

Clarification regarding resident departures

Posted by: Yanci · Concurred: all residents · Objection: none, which is the issue

Yanci is not a patient. Thistledown does not have patients. Thistledown has residents, and residents may come and go as they please, at any hour, by any door, without notifying anybody, because they are adults and this is their building.

Every door at Thistledown is unlocked. The side door does not even latch properly and nobody has asked for it to be fixed. The property manager offered to fix it in 1998 and was told, firmly, to leave it alone.

She is therefore not escaping. There is nothing to escape. She has said, on the record, that this is the single most disappointing fact about the entire facility.

What she wants is to be retrieved. Retrieval is not a security procedure. Retrieval is a two-hour drive with the radio on and a sandwich each. It is on the calendar in pencil. The pencil is a formality.

Retrieval log · Selected entries · 411 total, none of them incidents

The retrieval log

Maintained by Brian in a pocket notebook. Not a facility record. Not submitted to anyone. He has been asked twice for a copy and has declined twice, politely, both times.

Log of departures and retrievals, with location, distance, and duration
Date	Found at	Distance	Time to retrieve	Note left
Apr 1971	The county fairground, which is a field	6 mi	40 min	“GRANDSTAND.”
Aug 1984	A bowling alley, mid-frame, winning	22 mi	3 h	“TEN.”
Nov 1991	The roof of the hardware store	2 mi	5 h	“UP.”
Jun 1996	A wedding. Not invited. Seated at table four.	31 mi	2 h	“WEAR THE GOOD SHIRT.”
Mar 2001	Delaware	612 mi	6 days	“EAST UNTIL WET.”
Sep 2004	A public library, in the stacks, reading	14 mi	90 min	“DEWEY 133.”
Jul 2009	A dog show. Judging. With a clipboard.	48 mi	4 h	“ASK THE DOG.”
Feb 2013	The bog. Ours. Standing in it.	0.4 mi	11 h	“CLOSER THAN THAT.”
Oct 2017	A regional jam competition, disqualified, unrepentant	19 mi	2 h	“NOT MY JAM.”
May 2020	The parking lot	40 ft	9 h	“WARMER.”
Aug 2023	A ferry. Wrong ferry. Correct sunset.	77 mi	7 h	“TWO BELLS.”
Jan 2026	The passenger seat of his own car	0 ft	4 h	“THINK.”

Four hundred and eleven departures. Four hundred and eleven retrievals. She has never once been retrieved by anybody else and has turned down two offers.

Selected retrievals · Written up in full · For nobody

Three of them

March 2001 · Six days · The long one

Delaware

RET-208

Departed: Tuesday, side door, 4 AM
Distance: 612 miles
Note: “EAST UNTIL WET”
Found: On a bench. Facing the water.

Write-up

Six days. I drove east until the road stopped and then I walked. She was on a bench with two coffees, one of which was going cold, and she said “you took your time.”

The second coffee was mine. She had been buying a second coffee every morning for six days on the chance that day was the day. — B.

RetrievedDrive home: 11 hours · Radio: on

May 2020 · Nine hours · Forty feet

The parking lot

RET-377

Departed: Not really
Distance: Forty feet
Note: “WARMER”
Search radius: Four counties

Write-up

Nine hours. Four counties. Called a marina. Called a bowling alley. Called a man in Ohio I have called before.

She was in the parking lot the entire time, sitting on the wall, watching me back the car out and in four separate times. When I finally saw her she said “warmer.” That was the note. That was always the note. — B.

RetrievedSearch radius: 60 mi · Actual: 40 ft

January 2026 · Four hours · Zero feet

The passenger seat

RET-411

Departed: Debatable
Note: “THINK”
Location: His car. The whole time.
Discovered: Mile forty-one

Write-up

Drove forty-one miles before I looked right. She had been reading the map the entire way and correcting my turns out loud, and I had assumed that was the radio.

She said the note was a clue and that I should think. She was right. She is always right. I turned around and we got sandwiches. — B.

RetrievedMiles driven: 82 · Miles necessary: 0

The notes · Left on the kettle · Every single time

What the notes said

She leaves one every time. Always on the kettle, because she knows what he does first. Every note is a clue. Every note is solvable. She has never left an unfair one.

“UP.”

The roof of the hardware store. Took him five hours because he searched every upstairs room in town before he thought about outside. She waited. She had brought a book.

“TEN.”

A bowling alley. Ten pins. He got it in the car park in under a minute and was so pleased with himself that he told the man at the desk, who did not care.

“EAST UNTIL WET.”

The Atlantic. Six days. He calls it the hardest one and he is lying, because he solved it in four seconds and simply had to drive there.

“DEWEY 133.”

The occult shelf of the public library. She was sitting on the floor in the aisle, reading a book about herself, disagreeing with it in the margins in pencil.

“ASK THE DOG.”

He asked the dog. The dog knew. He has never fully recovered from this and he brings it up roughly once a year.

“CLOSER THAN THAT.”

The bog. Eleven hours, because he did not believe she would pick the bog. She picked the bog. She stood in it, in February, out of sheer commitment to the joke.

“WARMER.”

The parking lot. Nine hours. The note was a game he did not realise he was already playing, forty feet from the door, the entire time.

“TWO BELLS.”

The ferry. Two bells is the signal to cast off. He arrived as it was leaving, and he got on it, and he did not ask where it went.

“THINK.”

The most recent. He drove forty-one miles with the answer sitting beside him reading the map. He has this one in his wallet.

All four hundred and eleven notes are kept in a tin. The tin was a biscuit tin. There are no biscuits in it and there have not been since 1971.

Retrieval protocol · Revision 12 · Written and revised by the same person

He has stopped calling it a problem

Resident retrieval protocol — revision 12

Author: Brian · Approved by: nobody, it is not that kind of document · Revisions 1–11 destroyed

Check the kettle. The note is on the kettle.
Read the note. Do not read it twice. Twice is cheating and she will know.
Think. This is the whole step. Do not skip it. (Added rev. 12, after January.)
Bring two sandwiches. Not one. She will already have brought two, and then there are four, and that is correct.
Do not call anyone. Nobody is missing. Nobody has ever been missing.
Do not hurry the drive back. There is no reason to hurry the drive back and there never has been.

Revision 12 removed the word “incident” from this document in all six places it appeared. Revision 12 also removed the words “wandering,” “elopement,” and “concern.” Revision 12 is one page shorter and considerably more honest.

Filed this for eleven revisions as a safety procedure. It is not a safety procedure. It is a standing appointment and she made it for us. — B.

Her side of it · Given at the quarterly · Entered into the minutes

Yanci, on being retrieved

“I can walk out of here any time I like, which is the trouble with the place — so I leave a note he can solve, and he solves it, and I get four hours in the car with somebody who is genuinely delighted to have found me.”

— Yanci F., Unit 11, resident, not a patient, has said so

★★★★★

Four hundred and eleven times he has come and got me. He has never once been cross about it. He has never once said the word “again.” He gets out of the car doing a little jog. It is pathetic and I would not change a thing.

— Yanci F., Unit 11

★★★★★

She is faster than him. She has always been faster than him. In sixty-seven years he has never caught up to her once and he has never stopped setting off after her, which the committee regards as the correct response.

— The Quarterly, minutes, item 19

Care plan · Duplicate card · Left pocket, brown coat

The copy she carries

One laminated card hangs by the coffee station. A second one exists. Yanci has it, folded, in the coat she leaves in.

THISTLEDOWN — CARE PLAN (DUPLICATE)

Subject: Brian, property manager, 25 · Carried by: Yanci · Condition: soft at the folds · Reason: unstated

On the road. Subject eats at hour two. Not hour four. Subject will say he is not hungry at hour two. Subject is wrong at hour two.
Blood pressure. Cuff lives in the glovebox. Taken in lay-bys. Recorded on this card in pencil, by her, in handwriting she does not bother to make neat.
Driving. Two hours maximum, then she drives, and she drives extremely well, and he sleeps, which is the actual point of the second driver.
Sandwiches. Two, always. One is his. This has been true for four hundred and eleven retrievals and has never been mentioned aloud by either party.
Return. No hurry. There has never been a hurry. Anyone waiting at the building has been waiting since 1659 and can wait another hour.

Why she carries it: Not asked. Not answered. The card is in the coat, and the coat is the one she leaves in, and he has noticed, and he has never said so.

She takes the card with her. Which means she has already planned the part where I turn up. I found that out in 2013 and I have been unbearable about it ever since. — B.

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