{"id":2195,"date":"2021-09-30T12:00:38","date_gmt":"2021-09-30T12:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/niemanstoryboard.org\/2021\/09\/30\/lane-degregory-intimate-access-to-a-florida-covid-19-ward-with-conditions\/"},"modified":"2025-02-03T16:04:36","modified_gmt":"2025-02-03T16:04:36","slug":"lane-degregory-intimate-access-to-a-florida-covid-19-ward-with-conditions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/niemanstoryboard.org\/2021\/09\/30\/lane-degregory-intimate-access-to-a-florida-covid-19-ward-with-conditions\/","title":{"rendered":"Lane DeGregory: Intimate access to a Florida COVID-19 ward, with conditions"},"content":{"rendered":" \n
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As a writer who routinely embeds in her subjects\u2019 lives, the COVID pandemic was a blow to Lane DeGregory\u2019s reporting. She was barred from sit-down interviews, where she would normally run through a list of 30 quasi-psychoanalytic questions<\/a>. Even when she could be present with her sources, masks obscured their faces. The lack of handshakes and hugs felt weird.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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DeGregory, who has worked at the Tampa Bay Times (formerly the St. Petersburg Times) since 2000, is known for her intimate narratives that illuminate, as she puts it, \u201cpeople in the shadows.\u201d Her bylines include the 2009 Pulitzer Prize winner in feature writing, \u201cThe Girl in the Window<\/a>,\u201d a portrait of a family\u2019s adoption of a feral child. She recently completed an expansive series profiling cadets in their six months at the police academy<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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For 18 months, DeGregory found other ways to document the ways the pandemic was whiplashing her  Florida community. She shadowed a hospice chaplain<\/a> who held patients\u2019 hands when their families were locked out of hospital rooms, and visited a 96-year-old who continued to operate<\/a> her state-designated \u201cessential\u201d business (a liquor store).<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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But a critical angle was missing, DeGregory remarked during an April 2020 episode of the podcast \u201cWrite Lane:\u201d<\/a> Where are the stories from inside emergency rooms and COVID wards?<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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DeGregory contacted facilities every few weeks.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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\u201cI\u2019ve tried at least a half-a-dozen different ideas and at least that many institutions for each idea, and we can\u2019t get in,\u201d she told her listeners back then. \u201cIt\u2019s been really, really frustrating to not be able to tell those front-line stories.\u201d<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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How then, did DeGregory ultimately gain entry to a COVID-19 intensive care unit, where she and photographer John Pendygraft shadowed a nursing supervisor through a 12-hour shift?<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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The resulting story, \u201cTwelve hours in a Florida COVID-19 ICU<\/a>,\u201d<\/strong> published on Sept. 2, 2021, is a case study in flexibility and compromise. DeGregory said the article was one of the \u201chardest\u201d and \u201csaddest\u201d she has undertaken in a 30-year career of doing hard, sad stories.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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\u201cYou\u2019ve got to keep asking.\u201d<\/h2>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n
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Since the first cases of the novel coronavirus were reported in early 2020, journalists have struggled<\/a> to get eye-witness access to hospitals, where front-line workers have been fighting mostly invisible battles. The initial peeks came from employees<\/a>, not reporters.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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\u201cWe are bound by very significant federal privacy laws about health care information,\u201d Joni James told me. She\u2019s the director of communications at BayCare Health, which runs 15 hospitals in west-central Florida. \u201cOur job is always the patient first. Any story that we\u2019re going to tell, it has to serve that or it has to serve the community\u2019s health.\u201d<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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\"Pulitzer
Lane DeGregory<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n<\/div> \n
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It is worth noting that James previously was the Times\u2019 deputy editorial page editor at the Tampa Bay Times, She and DeGregory are friends. But that wasn\u2019t enough to grant DeGregory\u2019s requests for access.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Then, this past summer, the Delta variant launched its insidious march across the U.S. By mid-August, Florida was a hotspot for new infections, with a seven-day average of 21,000 cases. Increased hospitalizations and deaths followed, mostly among the unvaccinated. In Tampa, ambulance crews waited<\/a> in lines to deliver patients to overrun emergency rooms. Hospitals canceled elective procedures. State political leaders, notably Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, continued a campaign to block the power of municipalities, school districts and businesses to implement vaccine and mask requirements.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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DeGregory pressed her case again.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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\u201cYou get told \u2018no\u2019 every day, but you\u2019ve got to keep asking,\u201d she said during a recent interview.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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And this time, with vaccinations stalled and the situation dire, BayCare said yes.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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John Pendygraft<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n<\/div> \n
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\u201cWe became aware that people in our community didn\u2019t know what the Delta variant meant in terms of the new surge in cases,\u201d James said. \u201cSo many of the people in our care were unvaccinated. We really felt it was a public service to pull back and make people aware of the dangers of COVID.\u201d<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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She also noted that knowledge of the virus had progressed to the point where hospitals could safely admit visitors, including journalists. But as important was DeGregory\u2019s reputation for fair and empathetic storytelling.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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\u201cShe asks a lot of questions, rather than assume,\u201d James told me. \u201cTrust is required in these situations. You need to be able to trust that this person is able to bear witness. This isn\u2019t accountability journalism. If you want to do the FRONTLINE piece, you probably aren\u2019t going to get inside the door.\u201d<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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James helped arrange DeGregory\u2019s visit with Jennifer Tellone, the nursing supervisor at Morton Plant Hospital in Clearwater, Fla. The hospital provided a brief pre-interview the day prior. But conditions were set.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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\u201cI would have gone home with Jen,\u201d DeGregory said. \u201cI wanted to see her take her shoes off and put them in the trunk, greet her husband and her dogs, and see her kids.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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\u201cBut I wasn\u2019t allowed to. I was also told I was not really allowed to talk to Jen during those 12 hours because I couldn\u2019t get in the way, which I understand. I was very grateful for what we got \u2014 that we got anything at all.\u201d<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Four days from notebook to press<\/h2>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n
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DeGregory\u2019s day began in the hospital lobby a little after 5:30 a.m., just before the start of Tellone\u2019s shift. DeGregory and Pendygraft were vaccinated and wore N95 masks.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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As she worked, DeGregory enlisted her wartime muses, \u201cM*A*S*H\u201d and the late Ernie Pyle<\/a>. She filled a legal pad<\/a>, which is her go-to notebook, with rare treasures: firsthand sensory details like the clicking and beeping of monitors; moans of suffering patients, and the incessant spinning of blue lights that announced someone had coded. In her story, the pathos builds with each haunting scene, but there is an absence of catharsis.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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DeGregory, who has earned major awards for her long-form projects, often still works under intense deadline. She said editors at the Times feared her piece would lose its urgency if Florida\u2019s crisis eased. They gave her four days to turn in a draft.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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\u201cYou write it in such a hurried manner  \u2014 and walk away with second-guessing and regrets,\u201d she said. \u201cFor the next four or five days, you\u2019re like \u2018Oh I wish I had\u2019 or \u2018I should\u2019ve, could\u2019ve\u2019 or \u2018Why didn\u2019t I?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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A week after \u201cTwelve hours in a Florida COVID-19 ICU\u201d was published, President Joe Biden announced a federal mandate requiring employees at most hospitals to be vaccinated. That same day, BayCare reported its intent to follow the mandate.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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I spoke to DeGregory about the logistics of reporting her story, negotiations with administrators, and the pressure of being one of a select number of reporters to gain access to a COVID unit. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity, and is followed by an annotation of the story.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Can you describe what it was like reporting from inside the ICU and some of the ground rules you agreed to?
<\/strong>The walls of the room were glass, so we did all the reporting from the hall looking through the glass. We didn\u2019t go in the patient rooms at all, but you could pretty much hear them through the door. Jen (Tellone) moved from room-to-room, and we were allowed to walk around the ward. I interviewed a bunch of other doctors and nurses to get a sense of things.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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PR staff shadowed us the whole day, making sure we didn\u2019t go anywhere we weren\u2019t supposed to go or ask something we weren\u2019t supposed to ask or talk to someone we weren\u2019t supposed to talk to. They were kind of like fixers, but they were also blockers. I asked Jen if I could get her personal email and cell phone, and the PR woman jumped right in and said, \u201cNo, you\u2019ll have to go through me,\u201d before Jen could even answer.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Jen had a tiny office right off of the ward and at the end of the day she was kind enough to give us an hour to ask a bunch of follow-ups. That night, of course, I had another 70 million questions so I typed them all out for the PR lady and asked if I could call Jen. She was like, \u201cNope, but I\u2019ll try to get what I can.\u201d<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Did you enter this project with a predetermined theme you hoped to explore? And who was your intended audience?
<\/strong>It was just \u201cLet\u2019s put people on the front line and see what these nurses are seeing.\u201d I wanted to take readers to a place to make them feel the impact of what was really happening. I want to show people this is real and not fake news. I want to get beyond numbers and pie graphs. What if you were Jen for a day? I wanted to write for readers who weren\u2019t going to see that for themselves.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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The themes we talked about were frustration, desperation and helplessness.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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How did you obtain background information on the patients? Were you allowed to talk to them?
<\/strong>No. But during rounds, outside every patient\u2019s room, they would summarize: \u201cRoom 84: This is a 56-year-old man from Brandon, Fla., who came into the regular hospital on Aug. 3. He\u2019s been with us for four days now and his blood sugar is high and he is desaturating and he needs to be put on a ventilator.\u201d They would give that little thumbnail of every single patient.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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One of the respiratory therapists and a nurse were hanging back, taking notes. They were offering other details without us having to ask. Things like: \u201cOh my God, that poor woman. She just bought a house.\u201d<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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After the story (was complete), John (the photographer) and I vetted all this stuff with the PR people. We had a phone call with me, Joni James, Maria Carrillo (DeGregory\u2019s editor at the Tampa Bay Times) and the hospital PR person, where she said, \u201cRead us what you say about each patient.\u201d<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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We had to do this dance step with them about what we could and couldn\u2019t say. It was a lot of work to blur the specifics that normally I would have dived into.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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I imagine you in front of your computer after the hospital visit. You need to write. Where do you start?
<\/strong>I got up early on a Saturday and read through my notes and tried to figure out what I was going to do. That\u2019s when I kind of lost it.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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It was such a gift being let in there. I felt so much pressure to do a good job. The challenge of trying to find a unique spot in the canon of COVID stories weighed very heavily on me. I\u2019m writing about something that everybody and their brother all around the world has written about for the last 18 months. What can I do to make mine different or better? I don\u2019t want to let the hospital people down or my fellow journalists down or squander the chance that the newspaper finally got. I want to do the best to honor and tell the stories of these front-line health care workers.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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I don\u2019t know which of those broke me down, but I just sat there and cried a while before I could start to type.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Annotation:<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0Storyboard\u2019s questions are in red; DeGregory\u2019s answers in blue. <\/em><\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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\"Medical
Medical workers at Morton Plant Hospital in Clearwater work to stabilize a COVID-19 patient in late August, 2021. John Pendygraft, the Tampa Bay Times<\/small><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n
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Twelve hours in a Florida COVID-19 ICU<\/a><\/h2>\n

On this ward at Morton Plant Hospital, nurses are overwhelmed by the number of new, desperate cases.<\/h3>\n\nBy\u00a0Lane DeGregory
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\nPublished\u00a0Sep. 2, 2021 \/ Updated Sep. 10
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\nShe gets to the hospital 20 minutes before her shift, walks through the lobby carrying a smoothie, hoping \u2014 but not believing \u2014 that today might be better than the day before.
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\nWhen she steps off the elevator on the second floor, she turns left, toward what used to be the Intensive Care Unit. Since mid-July, it\u2019s become the COVID-19 ICU.
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\nJennifer Tellone has started calling it \u201cThe War Zone.\u201d
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\nIn the small office she shares at Morton Plant Hospital in Clearwater, Jen lifts her mask to sip her drink. She hasn\u2019t even put down her purse when another nurse rushes in.
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\nThe patient in Room 84 can\u2019t breathe. She needs to be intubated \u2014 right away. \u201cWant me to put in for a chest X-ray?\u201d Jen asks, pulling an N95 mask over her surgical one.
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\n\u201cThey\u2019re on their way.\u201d
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\n\u201cIs there anything you need me to do?\u201d
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\n\u201cAsk for fentanyl.\u201d
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\nThrough the glass wall, Jen sees the patient on her back, gasping, arms flailing. Nurses wearing plastic gowns and respirators are struggling to sedate her. Others are pumping air into her mouth with a plastic bulb.
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\nTubes snake from her wrists and chest. Above her head, monitors blink green, red and blue lifelines. Outside the door is a cart labeled: \u201cFor Code Use Only.\u201d
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\n<\/a>As you were writing, did you make a conscious effort to avoid medical jargon?<\/span>Usually, I try to write for the layperson who is not going to have any inside knowledge, but I was so wishing I knew more about medicine and what they were doing. I wish instead of a PR person they could have given us a nurse or a nursing student or someone I could go, \u201cWhat\u2019s going on? What are they doing?\u201d (I didn\u2019t think to ask for that). The medical stuff was so confusing that I felt completely inadequate. The only way I was able to come to peace with it was to say I\u2019m giving a laymen\u2019s perspective. I\u2019m not giving a medical perspective. I\u2019m only going to give readers what I can get by watching.<\/span><\/span>
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\n\nThe patient is 63 years old, someone reads from a chart. She had been hospitalized two weeks earlier and rushed to the ICU that morning.
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\n\u201cWhere\u2019s her family?\u201d asks Jen.
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\n\u201cHer son is here,\u201d says another nurse.
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\nJen nods, then sighs. \u201cThis is how yesterday started.\u201d
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\nYesterday was the worst day on her ward. Ever. Three COVID-19 patients died \u2014 two before 8 a.m.
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\nThey were 44, 50 and 64 years old.
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\nJen had to tell their families.
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\nA man collapsed on the floor beside her, wailing when his wife passed.
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\nA woman begged Jen to save her husband, sobbing, \u201cHow do I tell our 6-year-old daughter, \u2018Daddy\u2019s not coming home?\u2019 “
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\nJen is a trauma nurse, mom to two teenagers. She rarely cries.
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\nYesterday, for the first time in forever, she broke down.
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\nHer husband told her, \u201cWhenever you\u2019re ready to step away, I\u2019ll support you.\u201d
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\nToday, she woke in the dark, pulled on her blue scrubs, tied her hair into a ponytail and came back for a 12-hour shift. She\u2019ll try to save the sickest COVID-19 patients, knowing that no matter what she does, most of them won\u2019t make it \u2014 and that so many more are waiting for those beds.
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\nJen made a career in intensive care because she likes treating a variety of life-threatening conditions, helping the worst patients get better and go home. She\u2019s been a nurse on this wing for 20 years and is now a manager.
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\nWhen the pandemic hit in March 2020, she helped set up the hospital\u2019s first COVID-19 ward, implementing new protocols. Everyone was terrified, anxious for their patients and themselves.
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\nBut by this spring, doctors had figured out new treatments. They had better medicine, new machines. People were getting vaccinated. Nurses began scheduling vacations, wondering when they might be able to stop wearing respirators.
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\nJen\u2019s unit has 18 beds. In June, there were only an average of three COVID-19 cases each day.
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\nThen, two weeks into July, cases started spiking. In one month, infections increased 10-fold. To make room, BayCare had to suspend elective surgeries in its 14 hospitals across Tampa Bay.
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\nAbout 40 percent of the beds in those facilities now are filled with COVID-19 cases. On this day, near the end of August, BayCare\u2019s hospitals have 1,164 cases \u2014 462 more than during the peak in July 2020, before there was a vaccine.
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\nAcross the country \u2014 around the world \u2014 the same scenes are playing out. Emergency rooms are overwhelmed. Ambulances are being turned away. More people are dying each day: An average of 250, just in Florida.
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\nThe delta variant is spreading faster, striking harder, hitting younger people, even kids.
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\nThe saddest part, Jen says, is this didn\u2019t have to happen. Most of her patients, and the ones suffering the most, haven\u2019t been vaccinated.
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\n\u201cHow did we get here?\u201d asks Jen, who got vaccinated as soon as she could. \u201cWhat\u2019s wrong with people who still don\u2019t believe?\u201d
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\n<\/a>Was there any discussion with your editors about the extent to which the article would draw attention to vaccination without starting to sound preachy?<\/span>That was a huge factor that I feel you need to convey to readers, but how do you say that without wagging a finger at the victims or the patients? I think I decided to make it a thing through Jen\u2019s eyes because she was kind of incredulous about that. Let her be the one who was outraged.<\/span><\/span>
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\n\nFor her and her staff, last summer\u2019s fear and anxiety have morphed into frustration and anger.
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\nSome patients beg Jen for the vaccine, though it\u2019s too late. Others continue to insist COVID-19 is a hoax \u2014 while they\u2019re dying.
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\nHer job is to try to save them, not judge.
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\nBut people are suffering so much more, she says, languishing two or three weeks in intensive care before they eventually go on a ventilator. Once that happens, 95 percent die.
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\nIf everyone could see what she sees, she says, the horror and hopelessness her nurses live with every day, the anguish the patients\u2019 families endure, maybe they\u2019d believe.\n

6:35 a.m.<\/h3>\n<\/a>How did you decide on using time as part of the narrative structure?<\/span>I did that for my own edification when I was making a timeline and it just kind of stuck. I kept tracking which were the most important moments during the first couple of hours. Then I just found myself putting timestamps in there.<\/span><\/span>
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\nAfter the woman in Room 84 is sedated and someone sends her son home, after a nurse rolls away the emergency cart, after Jen checks on an 80-year-old man from an assisted living facility, she sinks into a chair at the nurses\u2019 station and opens a three-ring binder.
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\nThe night nurse manager peers over the pages with her, reports on each patient.
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\n\u201cThis one with the belly bleed is unresponsive,\u201d says the nurse. \u201cToo fragile to move.\u201d Jen nods. The nurse turns the page. \u201cThis girl in 93, doctors were trying to hold off for her, but … “
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\nJen doesn\u2019t look up. Now that the patients are staying longer, the nurses get to know them, and their families.
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\nJen knows the 36-year-old woman has two young children, that she\u2019s been holding on for two weeks, that yesterday she had respiratory failure and turned blue.
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\n\u201cShe\u2019s going to need to be intubated,\u201d the nurse says. The beginning of the end.
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\nThe ward is shaped like a U, with nine rooms on each side. The front walls are glass, so staff can see into them without opening the doors. The ventilation system has negative pressure, so contaminated air recirculates into the ducts.
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\nMost of the patients are motionless, sunken into medical comas. The few who are still conscious sometimes moan.
\n
\nTVs are not on here. There\u2019s no music. No visitors, until the end. But nurses constantly call out to each other, phones ring, the halls buzz and beep. And too often, a siren screams throughout the hospital, blue lights spin from the ceiling, signaling someone has coded — if not already died.
\n
\nNurses have little time to put things in perspective or process the pain. There\u2019s a massage chair in the break room, piles of granola bars and cheese sticks. But they often skip meals.
\n
\nA poster by the medicine room proclaims: Here\u2019s to another day of outward smiles and inward screams.
\n
\n<\/a>When you first saw this poster did you recognize its significance to the story?<\/span>Yes, absolutely. I\u2019m always reading the walls, looking for signs and stories and cartoons and bumper stickers and memes. What do people put up around them? I feel like that gives you a really good insight into how they see themselves or what they use to motivate themselves. That\u2019s always one of the first things I\u2019m doing \u2014 scanning the walls of the bulletin boards.<\/span><\/span>\n

8:00 a.m.<\/h3>\nThe man in Room 89 is deteriorating. His lungs blew out from pumping so much oxygen into them. Doctors put him on steroids, and he\u2019s been on a ventilator for two weeks.
\n
\nTo relieve pressure on his lungs, he needs to be flipped over, onto his stomach, the respiratory therapist says. The patient is hooked to a tangle of tubes and a half-dozen monitors. He\u2019s a big man. Most of the people in this ward are obese.
\n
\nHe\u2019s 50 years old \u2014 the same age as Jen.
\n
\n\u201cI\u2019m coming,\u201d she calls, pulling on blue gloves and her N95 mask. \u201cHey, we need another pair of hands.\u201d
\n
\n<\/a>How did you determine which details to focus on and how much time to spend observing Jen versus exploring the ICU on your own?<\/span>I was very confused to tell you the truth. The whole thing was exhausting. I didn\u2019t know if I was getting what I needed. John Pendygraft, the photographer, and I split up as often as we were together. He would see something in one place and alert me and I would see something and alert him. He was trained on Jen a lot while I was trying to ask the other people in the hall what was going on.<\/span><\/span>
\n
\n\nSix people work together to roll sheets beneath the patient and thread tubes out of the way. Jen stands by his head as a co-worker pulls out the ventilator, watching the numbers dropping on the monitor. Two more nurses are \u201cbagging\u201d the man, manually pumping air into his lungs until they can reconnect the machine.
\n
\nOnce he\u2019s turned, Jen re-hooks his lines, smooths a clean sheet over his back, checks to see if his vital signs improve.
\n
\nThey don\u2019t. Ten minutes later, he\u2019s worse than when he was on his back. Jen shakes her head and tells the nurse beside her, \u201cHe\u2019s not going to make it out of here.\u201d\n

8:30 a.m.<\/h3>\nRounds are supposed to start at 8 a.m. But with so many emergencies, they often begin late.
\n
\nThe team gathers in the hall, a dozen people: Nurses, therapists, doctors. A pharmacist. A chaplain. A social worker. A dietician. A couple of interns. They each push a cart with at least one laptop on it, checking information, typing into charts.
\n
\nJen carries two phones and a beeper and wears an Apple watch to check email. Sometimes, nurses on other floors need her. Sometimes, she needs help, with X-rays, prescriptions, tests and specialists.
\n
\n\u201cIt\u2019s a little crazy in here,\u201d a nurse tells the primary doctor on duty.
\n
\n\u201cNot as bad as yesterday,\u201d he says. Not yet.
\n
\nOutside each room, a nurse reads through a chart, updating the team on the patient\u2019s condition. They talk about family members: Who is making medical decisions? If they can\u2019t find a relative, they go through the patient\u2019s phone.
\n
\nThey start rounds at Room 81, where the man\u2019s stomach is bleeding. \u201cHe\u2019s not doing well,\u201d the nurse says.
\n
\nThey\u2019re about to head to the next room when Jen interjects, \u201cThe woman in 84 is really looking bad.\u201d
\n
\nSo the team heads across the hall. \u201cAfter you get a PICC line in, try to prone her,\u201d the doctor says, meaning they should roll her onto her stomach.
\n
\n\u201cWho is her health care surrogate?\u201d asks Jen. \u201cWe need someone legally to make some decisions.\u201d
\n
\nIn Room 86: A 46-year-old man got so aggressive he had to be sedated.
\n
\nRoom 91: This man has been in the ICU for a week. \u201cVery anxious,\u201d says a nurse.
\n
\nOn the way to the next room, Jen\u2019s cell rings. \u201cYes, we just got a new one. No, we don\u2019t have a bed,\u201d she tells a nurse on another floor.
\n
\nRoom 92: Jen says of this woman, \u201cThere\u2019s not much more we can do.\u201d
\n
\nRoom 95: This woman has pneumonia, almost coded yesterday.
\n
\nRoom 97: The man was hypothermic overnight.
\n
\nOn other floors, seven more COVID-19 patients are waiting to get into the ICU.
\n
\nA doctor, who had been on duty the day before, walks up to Jen on his way through the ward. \u201cHey, are you okay?\u201d he asks. \u201cI was thinking about you last night.\u201d
\n
\nJen swallows and nods without meeting his eyes.
\n
\n<\/a>There is so much vivid detail, yet repressed emotion in this story. Did you get that feeling as you were reporting?<\/span>There was a little bit of conversation among the nurses, but it was mostly about the patients. They were these stoic, front-line emergency workers and they\u2019ve dealt with this shit every day and they were getting overwhelmed and exhausted, but they weren\u2019t really letting themselves get too emotional. They couldn\u2019t afford to. I felt like they were more trying to buck up each other than letting themselves feel a lot of stuff.<\/span><\/span>\n

10:50 a.m.<\/h3>\nAfter hours on her feet, Jen finally gets to sit. At the nurses\u2019 station, she reads lab reports, answers calls, talks to families.
\n
\nSomeone brings Publix subs to the ward, so she takes a few bites in the break room before her beeper goes off again.
\n
\nA man who had been intubated on a ward upstairs has gone downhill. His family has decided to withdraw care. Instead of coming to the ICU, he will be going to the morgue.
\n
\n<\/a>This was one of several passages where you presented disquieting revelations about death inside the ICU using a series of punchy sentences. How did you decide the ways you would describe the suffering you witnessed?<\/span>Each one struck its own little hammer beat. It was there and it was over and it was there and it was over. I try, sometimes, to fast forward through hard parts. Instead of making somebody drown in the misery, just hammer it quick and back off. I think sometimes that\u2019s more effective than making you go into the black hole and have to climb back out.<\/span><\/span>
\n
\n\n\u201cHe was here with us before,\u201d Jen tells a nurse. \u201cWe transferred him out. But \u2026 “
\n
\nBy the time most patients come to the ICU, their bodies are exhausted from struggling so hard to breathe. Their hearts are deprived of oxygen, so their blood pressure plummets. They\u2019re in pain and panicking.
\n
\nNurses try to make them comfortable and update their loved ones.
\n
\nWhen you can\u2019t see the patient, you don\u2019t know how bad things are. You don\u2019t realize, or admit, Jen says, when it\u2019s time to let go.
\n
\nThe nurses don\u2019t want to prolong anyone\u2019s suffering, Jen says. \u201cBut we do it until the family is ready to stop.\u201d
\n
\nWhen death seems imminent, one visitor is allowed in the room. If there\u2019s no relative or friend, a nurse holds the person\u2019s hand. \u201cNo one dies alone here,\u201d Jen says.
\n
\nSome patients have Do Not Resuscitate orders: If they stop breathing, or their heart gives out, they don\u2019t want CPR. But those orders don\u2019t necessarily include ventilators, Jen says. Over the last couple of years \u2014 mostly since COVID-19 \u2014 health care officials have required a new classification: Do Not Intubate.
\n
\nMost people don\u2019t know they need that, Jen says.
\n
\nJust before noon, she ducks into Room 85. The man from assisted living is doing so much better he can be transferred to another floor. He\u2019s the oldest person on her ward, the only one who got the vaccine.
\n
\n<\/a>At any point, did you all take a break from reporting?<\/span>Full disclosure: We didn\u2019t spend the full 12 hours inside the ICU. They kicked us out because they said that staff and Jen needed a break. We were (scheduled to be) there from 6 a.m. to about noon and then 2 p.m. to about 6 p.m. For the two hours in the middle, they made us not only leave the ICU, they made us leave the hospital because they didn\u2019t want us bothering people in the cafeteria. John and I just left and got a pizza and spent the whole time going, \u201cWhat the —-? What are we missing?\u201d John and I came back early at 1:30 instead of 2 p.m., and we\u2019re waiting in the lobby for the PR person from the hospital to come back and take us upstairs. The president of the hospital comes down off the elevator and he goes, \u201cOh my God, the woman in Room 84 is coding. You\u2019ve got to get up there. Go, go, go.\u201d I was able to report right at that moment and Jen was like, \u201cYeah, you missed nothing between 12 and 1:40.\u201d<\/span><\/span>\n

2:35 p.m.<\/h3>\nBlue lights flash overhead. A siren howls.
\n
\nJen and her team rush to Room 84. Around the patient, two doctors and five nurses are pumping medications through IVs, trying to keep oxygen circulating to her organs.
\n
\nA machine, the size of a shoebox, is strapped across the woman\u2019s chest. The \u201cLucas 3\u201d device is new, a product of the pandemic, and does chest compressions so nurses don\u2019t have to.
\n
\n<\/a>I noticed that Lucas, the machine, is the only name other than Jen\u2019s who you present in the story. The remaining nurses and doctors are anonymous. Can you talk about this decision?<\/span> There was a team of 16 or 18 people doing rounds and following these patients. I got all their names and titles and details about their kids and how many years they’ve been there. When I sat down to write it, I thought, “I can’t go into 16 different lives and names and nursing titles.” It really felt like it was mucking up the narrative. I kind of do this thing by default: I close my eyes. If I’m writing a story like I watch a movie, I wouldn’t need to know all those names and titles. I can flesh Jen out as a character. So I focused on her most of the time.<\/span><\/span>
\n
\n\nEach time it pushes, the woman\u2019s body convulses, arms and legs jerking.
\n
\n\u201cEverybody knew it was going to come to this,\u201d a nurse says from the hall.
\n
\nStill, they try. And try again.
\n
\nWhen the woman came in this morning, she had begged a nurse to do anything. Anything! Her son said the same thing: No matter what, don\u2019t let her go.
\n
\n\u201cYou gotta call him again,\u201d Jen says.
\n
\nAnother nurse picks up her phone, dials the number on the whiteboard by the door. \u201cYour mom has coded again,\u201d she tells the son. \u201cIt\u2019s really not looking good. At this point, we\u2019ve given her all the medications we can.\u201d She pauses. \u201cI don\u2019t know if you want us to continue to do this. You can come up to see her.\u201d
\n
\nThe son is a 45-minute drive away. The nurse offers to FaceTime, but he has an Android phone.
\n
\n\u201cShe\u2019s failing, actively dying,\u201d the nurse tells the son. \u201cI\u2019m sorry to say that to you. We\u2019ve given her 110 percent. But she\u2019s just spiraling back down … I think at this point, it\u2019s time to give her peace.\u201d Silence.
\n
\n\u201cDo you want me to put a phone to her ear, so she can hear your voice?\u201d
\n
\nIn the hall, through the glass, everyone hears her son weep.
\n
\nJen walks away. At the nurses\u2019 station, she drops her head into her hands.\n\nShe tries not to think about all the patients she\u2019s lost, the children they won\u2019t see grow up, the grandkids they\u2019ll never know.\n\n<\/a>How did you go about getting these interior details about Jen?<\/span>When I take notes, I put arrows in the margins so I know where to go when I go back and ask follow-up questions. I wrote down a whole bunch while stuff was going on. There were questions I thought of in the moment, but I wasn\u2019t able to interrupt her doing her job until she was able to slow down. I just peppered her with them when she would stop for a minute to check email. I was walking with her when she was walking to refill her water bottle. Any chance I got. \u201cWhen this was happening what were you thinking?\u201d or \u201cIs it hard to not take this personally?\u201d I was just getting snippets here and there. It was not ideal.<\/span><\/span>\n\n

\n\nIn Room 83, the family of a woman who has been in the ICU for 25 days has decided to take her off life support. She\u2019s 56. A wife and mother.\n

\nOrderlies roll a new patient onto Jen\u2019s ward. This woman is 54. She\u2019s been in the hospital for three days. She\u2019s wrapped in thick plastic, so she doesn\u2019t expose others to the virus. She looks like she\u2019s been swaddled in Saran Wrap. She needs to be sedated and put on a ventilator. Now.\n

\nAs Jen hurries to meet her in Room 96, another nurse draws her into the coffee room. \u201cHere, you need to eat,\u201d she says, shoving a fork toward Jen\u2019s mask.\n

\nFor the first time all day, Jen laughs.\n

\n<\/a>This nugget: Were you keeping track to see if this was the first time she laughed, or did you ask Jen directly?<\/span>Both.<\/span><\/span>\n

\n\u201cThere\u2019s nothing like eating a tamale, then putting on an N95,\u201d she says. \u201cYummy!\u201d\n

3:20 p.m.<\/h3>\nThe woman in Room 84 codes again. Lights. Sirens. A dozen people rush to the room.\n

\n\u201cWe gotta stop. We\u2019re not doing anything for her,\u201d says a nurse.\n

\n\u201cHer son says he\u2019s on the way,\u201d says another. \u201cHe wants us to keep her alive until he can say goodbye.\u201d\n

\nIn Room 89, the man they had rolled over had his chest tube pop out. Jen sends someone to reinsert it. In Room 95, a woman\u2019s daughters have decided to let her go.\n

\nThen the woman in Room 84 codes again.\n

\nEvery 20 minutes, the staff brings her back.\n

\nShe has now coded seven times.\n

\n\u201cThis is something we don\u2019t do,\u201d Jen says.\n

\nJen\u2019s not religious or spiritual. She doesn\u2019t ask why things happen, what they mean. Or what comes after death. She\u2019s cemented in the here and now, multi-tasking through every moment. Making life and death decisions.\n

\nFinally, the woman\u2019s son runs in. Two nurses help him put on a gown, gloves, mask and goggles. \u201cWould you like the chaplain to be here with you?\u201d asks a nurse.\n

\nThe son looks stunned. He swallows, blinks back tears, nods.\n

\n<\/a>Were you allowed to follow up with any of the patients\u2019 families after witnessing these events in the ICU?<\/span>No, not at all. In fact, they didn\u2019t even want the patients\u2019 families to know we were there, so when the son came to see his mom in Room 84, we kind of had to scoot around the side where we weren\u2019t visible. You know, we had done so many other stories from the patients\u2019 and patients families\u2019 points of view, I was OK with just doing the nurses\u2019 story.<\/span><\/span>\n

\n\n\nHe shuffles into the room, freezes and stares. Then he collapses on top of his mother.\n

\nThrough the door, Jen motions for a nurse to unstrap the machine that\u2019s keeping her alive.\n

\nSo her son can truly hug her.\n

\n<\/a>Did you start to react to the pain as you watched these moments unfold?<\/span>In the moment, I was so worried about getting everything I could and getting it right and not missing anything and swiveling and working within the parameters and understanding what was going on that I wasn\u2019t really letting it sink in. I didn\u2019t cry about it until I started to write.<\/span><\/span>\n

5:50 p.m.<\/h3>\nNear the end of her shift, Jen\u2019s back is sore. Her knees ache. She\u2019s thirsty. No time to fill her water bottle. She keeps yawning.\n

\nShe can\u2019t stop thinking about the man who just lost his mom, and her own mom, who she lost in June to cancer.\n

\nA nurse from another COVID-19 ward comes to see Jen. She lost two people today and had heard ICU did, too. The nurses embrace, feeling each other\u2019s pain.\n

\nFor the next half-hour, Jen works on scheduling, checks on her nurses, walks the ward one more time.\n

\nWhen the night nursing supervisor comes, she briefs her on each patient.\n

\nRoom 83: She\u2019s CMO. Comfort Measures Only.\n

\nRoom 84: The woman finally passed. But her son is still with her.\n

\nRoom 86: This man brought pictures of his family. He told the ER nurse: Don\u2019t let me die.\n

\nRoom 89: He\u2019s still prone, still struggling. He\u2019s got kids. He\u2019s not going to make it.\n

\n\u201cBut 93 is better, right?\u201d asks the night nurse, referring to the young mom.\n

\nJen drops her eyes and says softly, \u201cNooooo.\u201d\n

\n<\/a>What did you have to cut from the piece that you wish could have appeared in print?<\/span>I had a lot more about the one young woman who had little kids. To me, she was one of the ones they were all rooting for the most and maybe the one who had the most to lose. (The PR staff) made me strip so much detail about her that I felt like she ended up being not even a secondary character. And I really wish I had that hour-and-a-half in the middle of the day when they kicked us out to be there when Jen finally took a bite of a sandwich or when they finally got to sit down and breathe for a minute. I regret that I couldn\u2019t get to Jen directly to call her at night. Some of my favorite interviews are through after-the-fact debriefing or fact checking when it\u2019s late at night. You can just be, \u201cOh my God, what happened today?\u201d<\/span><\/span>\n

\n\n\nSaving sick people used to motivate her to keep doing this hard work. Now, she says, there\u2019s no joy to buoy her through the sorrow. \u201cYou wonder: How long can I do this for?\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019ve definitely thought about what I want to do next. I want to work with dogs.\u201d\n

\nShe\u2019s grateful for her own health, her friends\u2019 and families\u2019 health. And that she finally convinced her 18-year-old son to get the shot. \u201cI had to bribe him with $100,\u201d she says.\n

\nShe\u2019s incredulous at co-workers who won\u2019t get vaccinated. BayCare doesn\u2019t require its employees to, but it asks each patient.\n

\nFor a while, the community was cheering for health care workers, bringing so many meals they donated some to the food bank. This summer, the love seemed to evaporate. On the \u201cHeroes Work Here\u201d sign, someone added the word \u201cStill.\u201d\n

\n\u201cI don\u2019t feel like a hero,\u201d Jen says. \u201cI feel helpless.\u201d\n

\n<\/a>To me, there is a bittersweet balance to this story. On one hand it conveys the resilience of front-line workers, but also the senseless tragedy of dragging them through what feels like an exercise in futility. Yet, you are known for attempting to find threads of hope in your stories. Were you able to locate them?<\/span>Jen just kept saying, \u201cI don\u2019t have any.\u201d (But) if you chose to go into this profession, you basically push yourself to do whatever you can to make strangers\u2019 lives as bearable as possible. Whether you\u2019re in a pandemic or a car crash or a mass shooting, these are the people that are going to be there. Jen or any of those other people could quit at any time. It\u2019s duty but it\u2019s also love. There is something to hang onto there.<\/span><\/span>\n

6:10 p.m.<\/h3>\nLike most of the nurses, Jen will drive home in silence.\n

\nSome try to process their day, so they don\u2019t take it to their families. Others try to block it out, so they don\u2019t have to relive it.\n

\nJen tries to not think about anything during her commute to Palm Harbor, which, of course, is impossible. When she gets home, she works out or walks her two dogs.\n

\n<\/a>What was your ride home like? What did you tell your family when they asked how your day was?<\/span>John and I rode to this story and back together. I really like being there with the photographer to plan and debrief. John is a very loquacious and very intelligent and very deep-thinking person, but the whole way back he didn\u2019t say one word. Like the nurses, we didn\u2019t really want to talk. You just had to process what happened, both in the reporting and the emotional toll. That could be my mom or my friend or my coworker. I\u2019ve watched people die before, but I don\u2019t think I watched three people die in a day. I came home and had a glass of wine and my husband was like, \u201cHow did it go?\u201d I was like, \u201cMmm, I\u2019m really, really exhausted. How was your day?\u201d I didn\u2019t want to rehash it all. But also, I don\u2019t want to sit there and say I had a hard day because then I think that\u2019s Jen\u2019s day every day. I get to work from my home in my yoga pants tomorrow. She\u2019s got to be back in there at 5:45 a.m. and do that all over again.<\/span><\/span>\n

\n\nHer kids don\u2019t ask about her day much. Her husband pours her a Chardonnay and lets her talk — if she wants.\n

\nHe doesn\u2019t understand why she\u2019s putting herself through this.\n

\nBut this job is what she does. And who she is.\n

\nShe can\u2019t walk away. Not now.\n

\n<\/a>How did readers react to your story?<\/span>I got hundreds of emails. At least a third were from health care workers or family members of health care workers who were like, \u201cThank you so much for telling people what it\u2019s like in there.\u201d And some from some nurses who were like, \u201cI couldn\u2019t take it anymore. I quit last month.\u201d And you could tell they felt guilt, that they had bailed while Jen was still in there fighting the fight. Answering those emails was really hard. But the best aftermath of the story was that two readers emailed me and said because of your story my spouse went and got the vaccine. I did not hear from Jen directly, but the PR staff said the nurses were very grateful. A bunch of local restaurants and delis sent food and lunches and bagels and breakfasts and smoothies to the nurses. A girl who is in ninth grade sent them thank-you notes. Our governor, Ron DeSantis, unbeknownst to me, his mother was an ICU nurse. One of her former coworkers wrote to thank me and said, \u201cI just mailed your story to our governor. How could he do this when his mother was an ICU nurse for 30 years?\u201d<\/span><\/span>\n

\n*** Bennet Goldstein<\/strong> is a general assignment and features reporter at the Dubuque (Iowa) Telegraph Herald.<\/em>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Pulitzer Prize winning reporter spent 18 months asking for access, 12 hours inside, and four days to deliver a take-you-there story<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8933,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"topics":[],"authors":[355],"issue":[],"class_list":["post-2195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-annotation-tuesday","authors-bennet-goldstein"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nLane DeGregory: Intimate access to a Florida COVID-19 ward, with conditions - Nieman Storyboard<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/niemanstoryboard.org\/2021\/09\/30\/lane-degregory-intimate-access-to-a-florida-covid-19-ward-with-conditions\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Lane DeGregory: Intimate access to a Florida COVID-19 ward, with conditions - 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