One Inspiring Covid Scene
45 minutes.
Friday night. Shift change time. About 7 p.m. A COVID-19 dedicated unit. The daytime charge nurse called me and said, “Chaplain Roger, we have a patient up here and it is not looking good. Can you come up?” “Sure. Of course.”
She was older, much older, and had just been in the hospital a few hours. The nurse told me that part of the family was desperately trying to find flight tickets from a sophisticated southern city and the other part was in a cosmopolitan beach town in Sunny California. “But,” the nurse told me, “I don’t think it will matter. If they get her at midnight or tomorrow morning, it will be too late.”
Shift change is a hectic time for nurses in a hospital. The day nurse wants to give report and get out and the night nurse wants to know what happening and get started. But this scene was seriously different, with all the PAPR and the N-95s and the sealed off doors.
The southerner was on the phone, and the day charge went into action. The west coast family and the southern family were all on a single call. The day nurse decided to transfer the call to the room phone. A nurse helped me get my PAPR on and the night charge and I went into the room to make sure the call was coming through. I told the family I’d read a Psalm and say a prayer. (The patient was quite religious, a Methodist from way way back.)
The day charge nurse, E, held the patient’s hand and looked her in the eye, and for the next 45 minutes took her turn holding the phone up to the patient’s ear. “Is her hearing aid in?” one family member asked. We all assured them that it was. The night charge nurse, J, stroke the patient’s hair and when it was J’s turn, J held the phone up to the patient’s ear. I held her other hand, on the other side of the bed from those two, and help up the phone to her ear periodically too. Every once in a while, I’d read Psalm 46 or 23, or say a silent prayer.
And then about 35 minutes into it all, the family mentioned that she had grown up on big band music. Oh yes. Oh yes. Then there shall be music! And we found some big band music.
J cried sometimes. E cried sometimes. They could have justifiably been doing other things on that floor, tending to important matters. But they would not let that woman die alone and if that family wanted to be on that phone for 45 minutes, they were going to be there for that. They were going to show up, the best they could in that moment. And love in action in that moment was holding a phone so her nephew could pray with her and her grandchildren could say goodbye and the rest of the family could say what they needed to say.
Soon, she took her final breath, hands held, with the voices of her beloved family never ceasing to tell her that she was loved and she was loved and she was loved. E went home. J started her shift in earnest. I talked to the southerner about next steps and so on. And with a simple, “Tell E and J thank you so much,” it was over.
