As we mark one year since the pandemic changed our lives, we asked you to introduce us to your COVID heroes
From a fairly standard nursing position in a busy Brooklyn hospital, she became a frontline warrior in the battle against COVID. Her shifts were filled with deaths and horror. She came home numb, exhausted, and traumatized, but kept toiling heroically in the shadow of the valley of death without becoming callous to human suffering.
In just a few short weeks, she lost ten pounds from stress and the frenetic marathon of running from patient to patient in cumbersome protective gear. There was no time to eat, drink, or even take a deep breath.
“It was hot under the mask, gown, and plastic shield,” she later told us, “but I was perspiring more from the effort of keeping my patients alive than the layers of protection.”
During those weeks when every available ward filled with critically ill patients, there was no time to think, no time to dwell on emotions. Yet in that race from bed to bed, she paused to soothe, to reassure and to comfort. She took the time to check on each patient again and again and then “one more time.” And sometimes — too many times during those terrible weeks — she had to recite the Vidui posted on the frum nurses’ chat.
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