Elopement Risk

I park in the Emma Jones lot behind the North Hospital where I work. Every morning I walk up stairs out of the lot, through a back door of the North Hospital, past the inpatient psychiatric unit until I wind my way up the stairs to the second floor to my office.

Around Valentine's Day I noticed the pink sign on the door to the inpatient unit. It took awhile before I read the sign. It reads: Caution: Elopement Risk.

All kinds of fantasies stirred up in me with this sign. I started having thoughts that if I stood there long enough, somebody would burst out of the secure ward and grab me running as we headed for the heliport and were whisked off to Vegas.

Or there would be overwrought parents standing by the door whilst their daughter's beloved paced nervously outside, heartsick over her entrapment.

I was so disappointed when I finally asked my boss what this meant, exactly. "You idiot," he assured me, "it means that someone will want to escape, so be careful going in and out."

I looked up the verb "elope" in the Oxford English Dictionary. It confirms my suspicion. The first meaning is: "Of a wife: To run away from her husband with a paramour." Then it says "More frequently said of a woman running away from home with a lover for the purpose of being married." Only the third meaning is "to run away, abscond."

Whatever, I find the whole thing very quaint.