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Lauren Flanagan and Alyssa Springfield work together as nurses at JPS in Fort Worth, where Lauren’s worked since 2016 and Alyssa since 2019. They’re both in their 20s — Alyssa’s 26 and Lauren’s 28 — and they’re both from the Fort Worth area, Springtown and Colleyville, respectively.
The two had been to New York before; they’re both well-traveled and had visited the Big Apple during adulthood. But things were quite different when they arrived at their hotel in the heart of Times Square on April 13 of this year. No Broadway shows were playing, no trips to the top of the Empire State Building were taking place, and no MICHELIN restaurants were open. Instead of snapping selfies off Ellis Island, the two were stuck in scrubs snapping selfies wearing N95 masks in empty streets.
Times Square, Alyssa noted, was like a ghost town. While all the lights and extravagant billboards were still operational, the famous ABC news ticker as seen from their hotel room on the 12th floor — a once swanky Sheraton that had now been turned into quarters for medical workers — gave only updates on the number of deaths and confirmed cases of COVID-19. Climbing each day.
New York City wasn’t just a hot spot for COVID-19 cases; it was the epicenter. If the government could have dropped a seal-proof container over the city in the hopes of containing the virus, they might have.
It was mid-March when it became apparent that the virus, which in retrospect seems like it was a mere blip on people’s radar at the time, had legs and was on the precipice of wreaking havoc. On March 12, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced restrictions on mass gatherings. Following this proclamation, the virus only spread, people only got sicker, and restrictions only got tighter.
In the following three weeks after de Blasio’s announcement, the number of people who had died from COVID-19 in New York City had surpassed 1,000 people.
With the steep rise of COVID-19 cases in the most densely populated city in the U.S. — and hospitals already in need of medical workers pre-pandemic — a mass and necessary congregation of nurses occurred in New York City.
Well aware of the need for young nurses not at risk of complications from COVID-19, Lauren and Alyssa volunteered to go to New York City through an emergency response staffing agency. Lauren says it’s a FEMA-driven system that acted quickly upon learning the two were willing to go to New York.
“It’s not like a normal travel nursing experience,” Lauren says. “They literally say, ‘Book a flight, come to this hotel, and then be ready to work,’ and we’ve worked every single day since we’ve been here basically.”
To equate the experiences of Lauren and Alyssa to a war isn’t far-fetched. When overseas combat occurs, military personnel often get called to duty, and little information is shared until they arrive. The situation is riddled with anxiety and an ominous feeling. And, similar to soldiers in war, Lauren and Alyssa were well aware that they were putting their lives on the line. Just replace active rounds of ammunition with dodging bacteria — one slip up, loose mask, or poorly timed rub of the eye could spell trouble.
“It’s something we had to accept before we even came up here,” Alyssa says. “I was like, okay, what are the odds, what are the chances, and what are the risks of this? Do I believe that I will actually live or die from this? I’ve kind of just accepted that and have a peace about it.”
On their first day, when going through an orientation of sorts, the grim tone from those who had been in New York since the beginning of the pandemic made the two hyperaware of the severity of the circumstances.
“We came into this situation knowing that, obviously, our travel staff is the hospital staff,” Lauren says. “Ninety-five percent of their hospital staff was gone. Much of this was due to being overworked, but a lot of it was due to them being ill themselves. And several staff members have died. That made it really hard to go into that situation. We knew that [death] was a possibility, but it’s just really hard and scary hearing that.”
Death became normalized, which they both begrudgingly admit, and was something the pair witnessed multiple times a day.
Lauren and Alyssa worked in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU), and as Lauren explains it, once a patient gets sent to the ICU, it’s a death sentence. Their unit’s mortality rate was 99.5%. Nurses would place body bags under the sheets because they were all too aware of the patient’s fate.
“We knew within minutes, hours, whatever, they were going to die,” Lauren says.
Lauren and Alyssa often felt bad lying to their patients when they’d hold their hands and tell them, “Everything’s going to be okay.” They felt helpless knowing there was nothing more they could do or say. At that point, providing a bit of comfort became their primary charge.
The cooler trucks, which became a symbolic story about the extent of the situation in New York City and held the bodies of those who had perished from COVID-19, sat right outside their window. Lacking any signs of success, it became clear throughout our telephone conversation that Lauren and Alyssa had become dispirited in the few weeks they’d been in New York.
There were many things the two shared that they felt uncomfortable publishing — the conditions of the hospitals, the regulations, the lack of supplies, and more. While avoiding the specifics of these situations, it’s important to understand that the hospitals — or places where COVID-19 patients were receiving treatment — were struggling to keep up with the virus. Too many cases and too few resources.
While the hospital had plenty of ventilators — “a bazillion,” as Lauren puts it — they didn’t have enough monitors. So, patients would often be on ventilators, but when nurses would check on them, they would be dead, as there were no monitors checking their vitals. Lauren suspects this to be the reason many died in their care.
Out of the countless patients (hundreds or thousands), Lauren saw only two extubations — when a doctor takes out a tube that helps a patient breathe, marking a release from the ICU and a reprieve from the aforementioned death sentence — and they remain her favorite stories to tell. She remembers those patients fondly. Their smiles. Their eyes. Their accents. And their relief.
As of press time, there are over 385,000 confirmed cases in the state of New York City, 7,822 in Tarrant County, and the number of cases continues to trend upward.
Lauren and Alyssa have since returned to Fort Worth and JPS. The pair spent 27 days in New York City. Alyssa would test positive for COVID-19 while in New York (she’s healthy and COVID-free now); half the nurses in the group they worked with would also test positive. Lauren, despite rooming with Alyssa and being in constant contact with the other nurses, never tested positive.
“Since I’ve come back, my time in New York feels like a dream,” Lauren says. “It feels like it never happened. It feels like it’s been excised from my life.”