For Vivian Rivera-Zayas and her family, the troubles began in January 2020 after her seventy-eight-year-old mother Ana Martinez experienced complications from knee-replacement surgery and doctors sent her to Our Lady of Consolation, a nursing home in West Islip, New York, for a few weeks of therapy.

Ana was supposed to return to her Williamsburg apartment by the end of the month, but her discharge was postponed again and again. Then came New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s March 12 order locking down nursing homes in response to COVID-19. Without daily visits from her family or much access to the Spanish-language newscasts the Puerto Rican native preferred, Ana had little understanding of how the pandemic was spreading across the country and zeroing in on elderly care facilities.

At the end of March, Our Lady of Consolation staff told Ana’s daughter Vivian over the phone that it would be promptly discharging Ana, even though by that point she had developed stomach pains, a severe cough, and difficulty breathing. Struggling to figure out what was happening, Vivian began to receive vague and conflicting updates from facility employees every time she called. First they assured her Ana was healthy, then suggested they would be discharging her with an oxygen tank to help her breathe.