Shut inside, anxious and alone, were Bubby and Zeidy really safe?

Avital: If you really love your parents, you’d shut them out of this simchah.

Judy: We can’t make people crazy with fear if we want to support them through this pandemic.

Avital

Before the coronavirus hit — before the world turned on its head and everything stopped functioning — I never doubted my choice of profession. I loved nursing: the constant movement, the adrenaline rush, and most of all, the satisfaction of being a part of people’s healing.

Of course, there were hard moments, tragedies, times when I slipped off duty to shed a quiet tear, and then donned my professional mask again and returned to the ward. But in general, helping people heal is a tremendously rewarding way to spend my days.

And then the pandemic hit.

Suddenly, I’m in the epicenter of the crisis. Suddenly, I’m seeing things no one ever wants to see. Suddenly, the hospital is severely understaffed, the ICU is full to the last bed, and we — just regular people, doctors and nurses — are putting ourselves in peril just by going to work.

My parents were worried, but they’ve always supported me in all my choices, and they weren’t going to stop now. When things started getting serious, my parents told me how proud they were of me and that they were cheering me on now too. We discussed how I could take the maximum precautions at work and at home to minimize the risk of bringing an infection home, chalilah. Besides for my parents and siblings, my elderly grandparents live nearby, and my mother and aunts work around the clock to help them out. But now, with the health risks so high, things were going to have to change.

“Bubby and Zeidy aren’t leaving the house anymore, and of course, we’re not going to visit them either,” my mother informed me one day, when I collapsed into a chair after work, utterly drained. “We’re figuring out how to get them deliveries of food, medication, anything they’ll need. It’s not easy, but there’s really no choice.”

“Of course,” I echoed. My hands were raw from scrubbing and still smelled faintly of the hospital’s preferred sanitizer brand; I’d come home through the basement entrance, and showered and changed from head to toe down there before venturing upstairs. It was an awkward system, but it would be safer for everyone.

And safer was the name of the game. I rested my head on my palms, a headache throbbing behind my eyes. Just today, I’d been on a shift in the ICU. It’s not my regular ward, but with the severe shortage of staff and the influx of critically ill patients, extra nurses had been pressed into service there.

“You look so tired, Avital. Are you okay?” Ma placed some dinner leftovers in front of me. “I warmed this up for you, you must be famished....”

“Thanks.” Just bringing the food to my mouth took an inordinate amount of effort. I thought of describing my day: the protective gear that weighed so much it was hard to move around, the rows of intubated patients, the horror of seeing people who’d entered the hospital with relatively mild symptoms and were now hovering between life and death, just days later. Then I realized there was no way to put it into words.