Xiamara QUIT Gus' team!

Xiamara Ramirez left Gus' staffing in a hurry last week. She pretty well raced down the hall ahead of me toward the Administrative offices. I don't know for sure, but at the time the thought I had was, "Oh, of course! She's going to complain about Gus and me." We had just made the point that there was no way she could be Gus' social worker. For some reason beyond rational imagination, she had just been appointed to that job after Joe Basso had been transferred elsewhere.

Gus was distraught, because he had been led along the garden path for most of a year with assertions that the "hospital" wanted to conditionally release him, and that his treatment team was working hard to find him community placement, which was the only task left before a petition could be brought to the court. It turned out to be all lies. Xiamara's appointment to the same position she had ostentatiously resigned back in the summer of 2024 (as Gus' caseworker) was the final blow which revealed the lying and once again, perhaps finally, ended this patient's willingness to consider that anyone at EMHC ever intends to help him.

There was more proof of the complete corruption Gus had long seen. Soon after the staffing and Xiamara's dash to Administration offices, Gus started hearing that he would shortly be transferred to White Cottage. There's not that much wrong with White Cottage itself. It's just that a transfer will mean no conditional release for him any time soon. That's a huge departure from what all these guys had been saying for months. It's a dramatic betrayal, which I unfortunately may have aided and abetted, by encouraging Gus to be cool and to believe that Dr. Gill and the rest of the treatment team and the administration were honestly trying to get him released. Gus' dad died last year. His mother is not doing well. His sisters want him to be able to help, and he loves his family.

One interesting bit is that the facility can't actually transfer Gus right now because he had a positive COVID test (he was in fact very sick), and he has to test negative before they can move him around. He recently went to a local hospital for another medical procedure in a van while the security guard, Paul Bennett (Badge No. 45), was coughing and sneezing all along the way. Badge 45 was even told by the hospital receptionist that he had to put on a mask (but he never did). I told Gus to get better, but don't test negative for COVID! Are they going to force him to take a COVID test the same way they brutally force people to take unwanted psychiatric drugs, just hoping the test will be negative so they can transfer him to White Cottage even if he'll make other people sick? That would be interesting, right? EMHC is a "hospital" (it's totally laughable).

Whoever is pushing this transfer is cynically harming Gus' whole family for no reason but retribution (or possibly for the convenience of the institution, or possibly to further some cover-up of why Xiamara was papering over the window in her office door contrary to regulations). They need to make an example that tells all the other slaves at EMHC and the other plantations, "Don't ever complain, don't ever snitch, we will get you for that!"

As Xiamara ran past me down the hall, I could almost hear her thinking exactly those words.