I was a brand-new nurse in May 2020, just after the second wave of Covid hit. On my first shift, I was handed a paper bag with a single N95 mask to last the entire week. I wore that same mask for 12-hour shifts, night after night. By the end of a shift, it would be damp from my breath, the straps stretched out, my face bruised along the bridge of my nose. I would dread having to put it back on. At one point, we didn’t even have proper gowns, just trash bags we’d reused between patients.

Walking into work every night felt like stepping into something uncertain and dangerous, and I carried that anxiety constantly. Crying in the supply room or bathroom between med passes became a regular occurrence.

I had been hired onto a general medical-surgical floor with cardiac monitoring, but the patients were so critically ill that it functioned more like a step-down unit. The hospital converted several other units into makeshift ICUs. They weren’t properly staffed or stocked, with equipment scattered and alarms going off constantly. We were regularly floated to these ICUs and to the ER, areas I had no experience in.

I remember walking into rooms filled with IV pumps stacked on poles, lines, and drips I had only learned about in theory. I was thrown into the deep end, expected to sink or swim—except I was responsible for other people’s lives. I cared for six or seven patients at a time, all isolated in their rooms, cut off from family and meaningful human interaction. Sometimes the only voices they heard all day were ours, muffled behind masks and face shields.

Most of them were severely hypoxic. They spent their days lying prone, on their stomachs, to help their lungs oxygenate their bodies. Many were on non-rebreathers or BiPAP machines 24 hours a day. The machines hissed constantly, leaving marks on their faces. If they removed their oxygen, even briefly, their saturation would drop into the 50s, far below the normal 95–100%.

I remember watching the monitor numbers fall in real time while they tried to talk or sip water, their lips turning blue, their breathing becoming labored. Even shifting their position could cause a drop. It felt inhumane at times, going into rooms and telling people they couldn’t move, couldn’t eat, couldn’t take off their oxygen, and couldn’t see their families. Some would beg me to call their loved ones, and I’d hold up an iPad or a phone while they tried to speak through a mask that made every word a struggle.

Many became delirious. They would pull off their oxygen or IV lines, confused and frightened. Their oxygen levels would plummet while alarms rang at the nursing station. We would see the numbers dropping and run, hurriedly putting on makeshift PPE, hoping we’d reach them before they lost consciousness or collapsed.

I remember walking into rooms to find patients halfway out of bed, tangled in tubing, gasping for air. We would try to reorient them, reposition them, stabilize them, hoping we were not too late.

In those moments, patients weren’t just scared, they were agitated or sometimes physically aggressive. Being hit, grabbed, or shoved wasn’t uncommon, especially when someone was delirious or fighting for air. I remember having my arm gripped so tightly it bruised, or being pushed back while trying to keep oxygen on someone’s face. There was very little protection from that, and it became another layer of stress we carried into every room.

This was not an isolated experience. It was every shift, for months. I would come back after a few days off and learn which of my patients had died. Their beds would immediately be filled with someone new. Eventually, I developed a sense of who wasn’t going to make it while they were still slowly suffocating alone in their rooms. They would look at me and ask, “Am I going to be okay?” I wouldn’t know what to say.

Even outside of those moments, there was a constant fear that I would bring the virus home, that someone I loved would end up the same way my patients did—isolated, struggling to breathe, dying alone. I kept my distance from my own family. Even when we spoke, it felt like there was a gap between what I was living through and what I could actually explain.

At the same time, I was seeing posts online from other healthcare workers who were struggling in similar ways, people sharing their exhaustion, their fear, their grief. Some ultimately died by suicide.

In November, my mom called to tell me my grandfather had died alone in a hospital room from Covid. I had spoken to him the night before. That same night, I went into work anyway. I performed CPR on one of my own patients for the first time. I ran into the room wearing only my N95—no gown, no goggles—and started compressions. I can still remember the feeling of her ribs cracking under my hands with each compression. I’ve coded so many people since then, but I’ve never gotten used to that feeling.

That experience didn’t end when the pandemic slowed down. It shaped the rest of my career. The trauma of my first year has stayed with me. The cracks that Covid exposed were never fully repaired. Hospitals are still overburdened. Staffing shortages, burnout, lack of resources, and violence against workers and patients are ongoing realities of capitalist healthcare.

So when I try to watch The Pitt, it’s not entertaining. It brings me back to those rooms, the sound of alarms, the feeling of rushing against time, and the patients I still think about. It reminds me of how fragile the system was—and still is—and how much of that weight healthcare workers continue to carry.