The people now ending up in the ICU with covid are those who've had it before. Some were hospitalized before, others had a "mild" illness that damaged their lungs. People come in with non-covid issues and end up on the vent with a peep of 18 and a paralytic because of the damage. Others come in with something completely unrelated, end up vented for surgery, and everyone is scratching their heads as to why they aren't improving and then someone mentions "oh yeah he had covid four times and that's why he's on oxygen at home."

"This is not the update wanted to give you. Your husband died about fifteen minutes ago. I'm so sorry."

The rest of it is harder to say. He wasn't alone. The respiratory therapist and I stayed with him until the end, squeezing his hands, telling him it was okay to go. We told him he fought well, had been so brave for so long, and he could rest. We wiped his brow and watched as he slipped away, out of his body and the devastation of the illness and into a bright light or a calming dark that wraps around you like a prayer.

Souls linger.

I became an ICU nurse at the end of July in 2020, during one of the first peaks of covid when it was all still so new. I learned how to be a nurse behind a respirator and a yellow gown, amidst the constant beeping and hissing of ventilators that couldn't support failing lungs. Because I was so new, I had no baseline for what normal nursing looked like; I just had a vague sense that it couldn't look like this. The unit was bleak and everything we did felt futile, and I realized at some point I felt more like a ferryman to death than anything else.

How it started How it's going I love being a nurse. Didn't exactly expect to be a new nurse in the middle of a highly politicized pandemic but life comes at you fast and even in a pandemic, there's nothing else I want to do. Caring for the sickest of the sick is an honor and I treasure my patients.