NEW ORLEANS — Vincent Milligan has been uncomfortable for months now. Friday, the Baton Rouge native underwent his second surgery of the year, one that had him looking forward to life outside of a wheelchair.
"I had a HALO on my leg, through my feet and my leg, all the way up as high as the boot," Milligan said.
But the next morning, shaking the grogginess from anesthesia in his quiet apartment above the Saenger Theater, he heard a noise.
"And then I hear a loud screeching noise, kind of like an airplane crashing or a car being dragged down the street, with a little bit of gravel sound with it," he said.
The Hard Rock Hotel, under construction across the street, had collapsed.
Milligan grabbed his dog, his wallet, and just one week's worth of medication before he hobbled downstairs, not knowing that he might not see the inside of that apartment again for weeks.
"This is just a big hardship that I wasn't expecting and I'm not ready for it after going through surgeries all year long and not working that much," he said.
Dozens of others are similarly displaced and are trying to make it work with little except the clothes on their backs.
"We had to get out and we couldn't even stay in the area," he said. "I was disoriented, I didn't know what was going on until I walked away and turned around, because everyone was looking and saw that the building had collapsed."
More than 30 other apartments in his building are untouchable, just feet away from the cranes teetering above North Rampart Street.
"Now I have a hotel room until whenever," he said. "But I still don't have clothes. I still don't have day-to-day life things. I don't have my computer. I don't have my things to work. I don't have my wheelchair."
And the Hard Rock's developer is only paying for nine days in the hotel room. After that, Milligan said, he's not sure what he'll do.