A CITY NURSE Healing in the I.C.U. during COVID-19. ...... These days, the days of COVID-19, Chaplin and Cunningham inhabit a twilight world that is celebrated by their fellow New Yorkers but only faintly seen. ....... Lenox Hill normally has four I.C.U.s; now, with the coronavirus raging through the city, nearly the entire hospital is a critical-care unit. .........
Chaplin and Cunningham’s twelve-hour shifts are a blur of sickness, urgency, risk, and loss. Trapped by necessity behind their masks and face shields, inhaling their own exhalations, they experience ferocious headaches. Moments of relief are rare and fleeting.
.......... The death toll is relentless, and older doctors and nurses have told Chaplin that the only thing comparable to COVID-19 was the height of the AIDS crisis. ........ In those days, no one was “sheltering in place.” Nowevery patient, every colleague, every surface, every friend is a potential threat
. Chaplin, whose roommate left for the relative safety of New Jersey weeks ago, comes home to solitude. .............. “When I wear a uniform, I put it on and take on my nurse self,” Cady Chaplin says. “But you lose your personal eccentricities, so I like to wear weird T-shirts underneath my scrubs, even if it’s just for myself.” ............ Coming down from these shifts, hearing codes all day on the intercom, it’s hard to get out of that fight-or-flight response. ........... She doesn’t want to be glorified all of a sudden. “This is what we trained to do,” she says. “This is what we do. That was true a year ago, and it will be true a year from now.” ...........
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