Liz Garcia: Nursing assistant
It is unprecedented: “We’ve never seen anything like this. Being in the front line, you get to see the gravity of the pandemic and you see how it directly affects the patients. They come in one day and they’re fine and it takes a couple of days and all of a sudden, they are not fine anymore. I’ve never seen anything this bad.”
It takes from you: “I have boys, so they want to do stuff constantly. But I’m needed here a lot. When you are home, you’re exhausted, too exhausted to do anything. You don’t want to cook or go anywhere. You feel guilty about doing stuff because you’re afraid if I have fun out there and am around people, what if you get it? It’s the quality of life that’s been put on hold, but we can’t stop what we are doing because we’re needed.”
It takes from families: “I’ve held the hands of patients who were dying, held the phones up to their ears so their families can say goodbye. You see the faces of those patients and I’ve seen so many of them. I don’t even remember their names anymore, but I see their faces. I see them driving home and I see them when I go to sleep and when I wake up. And it’s so sad.”
It needs to be stopped, with the vaccine: “The vaccine is hope. It’s progress. I trust in the science of everything. We have to do something. We have to have hope and have faith in the process. And we have to do it together.”
