HOSPITALS PUSHED TO THE BRINK

Hospitals in California — and elsewhere — already have been pushed to the brink.

They have hired extra staff, canceled elective surgeries and set up outdoor tents to treat patients, all to boost capacity before the cases contracted over Christmas and New Year's show up in the next few weeks, according to KCRA 3 News

Holy Cross and Mission Hospital have sprinkled holiday decorations throughout the hallways: poinsettias perched on counters, scraggly miniature trees in patients' rooms, caricatures of the Grinch doodled at nurses' stations.

But the bright colors don't distract from the constant cacophony: ventilators belching like foghorns, monitors beeping, machines whirring — all trying to keep even one more person from adding to the death toll.

Still, there are hopeful moments.

On Monday, Mission Hospital celebrated a milestone: 100 patients who had been in the isolation intensive care unit — reserved for the sickest of the sick — have survived and gone home.

In Holy Cross, “Here Comes the Sun” by the Beatles plays throughout the hospital when a COVID-19 patient is discharged.

The new pandemic tradition has happier roots — hospitals often sound a lullaby each time a baby is born.

It's a few seconds of respite, but it's not enough. For every patient who goes home, more are admitted.

Holy Cross charge nurse Melanie LaMadrid tends to her patients in 12-hour shifts, holding their hands in her purple gloves.

“It's all we can do,” she said. “Watching them suffer is hard.”

These nurses are not only exhausted, they are angry with those who flout pleas to stay home, stay safe.

“I wish they could just walk down our unit for a day and look at the faces of some of these patients," Carillo said.

You can be our messengers, nurse Genyza Dawson tells her patients when — or if — they get discharged. Dawson, who has a scar forming on her nose from the tight masks, begs them to spread the word.

“Now you know how it is,” she tells them. “You were one of the lucky ones.”

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