I’ve often wished people could shadow me for a shift to see all the different people who use the emergency room, the grown man who’s been suffering from knee pain for a month, the old frail lady with a UTI, the drug seekers and psych patients off their meds. Today, I desperately want everyone who subscribes to some half-baked conspiracy theory or complains about shops and beaches being closed to walk in my shoes for a day.

I hear it all the time on my days off: that this whole pandemic is blown out of proportion, that the numbers of infections are low given how many people live on this planet, that we should all go back to work and school and quit acting like this is any worse than the seasonal flu. But my job has never felt like it does right now. Never.

On a regular shift, I can easily manage the treatment of multiple patients on my own. And when I’m slammed, delegating a task like an IV start to another nurse is all I need to keep my head above water. Now, it often takes multiple people to keep one Covid-19 patient alive.

Today I’m trapped in a room for a few hours as the primary nurse for a Covid patient, staying inside to limit the times I go in and out. I stay gowned up because of our limited amount of PPE, and need another nurse to fetch me meds and supplies. Then my patient begins to crash. Two or three nurses come in and we fervently work to keep the patient from dying. Meanwhile, another Covid patient is deteriorating in the room next door, and another at the end of the hall. Soon, our entire module is working saving just three patients. A dozen more Covid patients need to be seen, and if one of them makes a turn for the worse our entire system will come crashing down.

The pressure Covid is putting on our healthcare system is immense. With each passing day we intubate a few more patients, and they will go on to stay in the ICU for weeks. Our ICU is nearly full and we’re nowhere near the peak of hospitalizations here. Soon enough, we’ll have intubated patients in the ER with nowhere to send them.

The same scenes are playing out all over the country, in some places to a degree much worse than in our hospital. Nurses and doctors are stressed, anxious, sick and exhausted. They’re not lying when they say this threat is real. Now is not the time to flippantly believe what you will. Do that when this is over. Now is the time to believe the computers in your pockets that stream news from around the world and the video stories of healthcare workers showing the reality from inside our hospitals. Believe that this invisible virus can kill you, that it is killing people all over the world, that it is stretching our healthcare system to the brink. And believe that doing your part, along with all the pitfalls of doing that, is a noble cause that is saving lives.