Rushing into the hospital for an overnight shift, I grab my brown paper bag of personal protective equipment, swing open the door to the coronavirus intensive care unit — and stop short. The patients are gone. The halls that were cluttered just a day ago with ventilator monitors are now empty, silent.
It has been nearly three months since we reconfigured our hospital to care for the Covid-19 surge. And as our numbers fall, from more than 100 critically ill patients to fewer than 20, most of our coronavirus units are closing.
This is good news. But there is no celebration. How can there be? Nearly 1,000 Americans continue to die every day from this virus, while others dance in crowded clubs and refuse to wear masks in public places. We were tragically unprepared for the initial deluge of patients with a virus we still cannot cure. And now, I am not sure how to feel about what comes next.
Each of the empty rooms still holds the memory of a patient. I think of the man who loved sugary sweet iced coffee and the Red Sox. He died with one of our interns at his bedside holding a phone to his ear for his family to say goodbye.
I pause in a doorway, remembering a grandmother with red nails and tattooed eyeliner who had been looking forward to a trip to Florida with her family. She died, too.
When I reach the corner room, I smile about the gamble we took when we decided to extubate a young cabdriver the night before a surgery that would have connected him more permanently to the ventilator. He made it out of the unit. I would like to think he’s home by now.
The first time I walked down these halls, it seemed to me that the very air itself was poison. Those were the days when we were not sure how long we would have to wear each N95 mask. We saved them in Tupperware or in the small basins that patients use if they need to vomit.
At home, a cough could send me into a panic that lasted for hours. I sprinted on my treadmill to prove to myself that my exercise tolerance was unchanged, that I was safe. I still do, on occasion.
I remember the early days, when we had to fight to get our patients tested, and even when we succeeded, we waited days for results to return from our state’s Department of Public Health. We debated the danger of aerosols and optimal ventilator settings. The public rallied behind us, with hashtags and so many food donations, praising us as heroes even as I hesitated and tried to hold my breath whenever I entered a patient’s room.
A few of these messages of support remain on the wall of the empty unit — a card with a child’s sweet drawing of a heart, a family photograph, a colorful thank-you poster from a local Girl Scout troop. On my way out of the empty unit, I snap a photo of the posters on the wall.
Still, even as I say “so long” to nurses returning to their own units, I am sadly aware that this is not an ending. The numbers of the sick and dying in my city decreased because we were practicing social distancing. And now, cases in areas of the country that reopened more rapidly are rising, with patients in respiratory failure filling intensive care unit beds in Arizona and Texas.
I see photos of the doctors and nurses there gearing up in their P.P.E., and I feel only exhaustion and dread, knowing what comes next — isolated deaths, terrible FaceTime goodbyes. I had believed that the hard-won knowledge of those of us in hard-hit places like New York City and Boston would begin to spread as efficiently as the virus, but now I am not so hopeful.
Juts a few nights ago, at home in my own bed, I was awakened by a page alerting me to a patient in the E.R. She was Covid-19-positive, a recent diagnosis.
It continues.
So we keep the closed unit empty and waiting. Though the hospital is filling once again with heart attack and cancer patients and those who are awaiting transplants, we don’t move any of them into these Covid-19 beds. Not yet. We maintain a backup schedule of critical care doctors who will return to work in the event of another surge.
These empty beds remind us that the virus is still here, and if we do not stay far from one another and wear our masks and wash our hands, if we do not continue to sacrifice our desires and do these uncomfortable things, the beds will inevitably fill again. And if they do, we will be more prepared. My state has ramped up testing and a robust system of contact tracing. Here in the hospital, we are more familiar with the nuances of this disease and its management.
But everyone is tired. The adrenaline of those early days has turned to profound fatigue.
And, of course, there are still people to care for, many of whom have been intubated for weeks. On my recent night shift, I’m relieved to learn that one of our patients, a young and previously healthy gardener who was intubated and comatose the last time I saw him, is finally waking up after nearly 60 days.
His delirium is clearing. Earlier in the day he spoke for the first time in months. It had been so long that he was surprised by the sound. As I do rounds with the team, I pause outside his door and wave. His arms are too weak to return the gesture, but he offers a tentative smile.
I’m still thinking of the long road he and countless others will face as I am on my way out of the hospital in the morning and pass a man heading into the lobby with a rolling suitcase behind him. He is trying to find the labor and delivery unit, he tells the security guard. His wife is about to have a baby. He sounds proud and I realize that it has been months since I last saw a visitor who is not coming for a death.
Outside, the air is humid, the sun so bright that my eyes tear up a bit. It feels like summer. There are sirens in the distance and a few other doctors and nurses walking up the hill from the parking lot, but for a moment, there is no one nearby. I loosen my mask a bit and let the stale air fall away before pulling it tight once again.
Daniela J. Lamas is a critical care doctor at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.
The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: [email protected].
Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.
