Frontline
disrobing out of work clothes, from his scrubs to his sneakers, before entering his home.
“I do not touch or speak to my children before I have taken a shower,” Fleurant said. “This is just how it is. You do not touch Daddy when he walks in the door.”
A week of vacation with his family startled him, when he could scoop the little ones up in his arms without fear. “I think they must have thought that was weird,” he said.
Trapped in a holding pattern as the coronavirus continues to burn across the nation, doctors and nurses have been taking stock of the damage done so far, and trying to sketch out the horizon beyond. On the nation’s current trajectory, they say, the forecast is bleak.
Jina Saltzman, a physician assistant in Chicago, said she was growing increasingly disillusioned with the nation’s lax approach to penning in the virus.
While Illinois rapidly reimposed restrictions on restaurants and businesses when cases began to rise, Indiana, where Saltzman lives, was slower to respond. In mid-November, she was astounded to see crowds of unmasked people in a restaurant as she picked up a pizza.
“It’s so disheartening. We’re coming here to work every day to keep the public safe,” she said. “But the public isn’t trying to keep the public safe.”
Since the spring, Gilman has watched three co-workers and a cousin die from the virus. When Fleurant’s aunt died of COVID, “We never got to bury her, never got to pay respects. It was a crushing loss.”
In state after state, people continue to flood hospital wards, where hallways often provide makeshift beds for the
overflow. More than 12 million cases have been recorded since the pandemic took hold in the United States, with the pace of infection accelerating in the last couple of months.
Jill Naiberk, a nurse at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, has spent more of 2020
in full protective gear than out of it. About twice a day, when Naiberk needs a sip of water, she must completely de-gown, then suit up again.
Otherwise, “you’re hot and sweaty and stinky,” she said. “It’s not uncommon to come out of rooms with sweat running
down your face, and you need to change your mask because it’s wet.”
It’s her ninth straight month of COVID duty. “My unit is 16 beds. Rarely do we have an open one,” she said. “And when we do have an open bed, it’s usually because somebody has passed
away.”
Many of her ICU patients are young, in their 40s or 50s. “They’re looking at us and saying things like, ‘Don’t let me die’ and ‘I guess I should have worn that mask,’ ” she said.
Sometimes she cries on her way home, where she lives alone
with her two dogs. Her 79-yearold mother resides just a couple houses away.
They have not hugged since March.
“I keep telling everybody the minute I can safely hug you again, get ready,” she said. “Because I’m never letting go.”