NEW YORK CITY — Rolled in on a gurney from an ambulance, Becky Enright's 85-year-old patient came in on her graveyard shift. She noticed his blue eyes. He didn't seem to be as sick as the other victims of COVID-19 that filled the rooms and hallways of Lincoln Medical Center's emergency room in the Bronx.

They had a few moments for small talk. He'd left his wife of 55 years at home. Soon, he was struggling for air — "belly breathing," as they say. Doctors debated intubating him.

It wouldn't matter. The speed of it all shocked Enright, a nurse of 15 years. She held his hand, a comfort she's now provided many victims of the novel coronavirus.

"We stayed with him as he died," she said.

Enright and fellow Harrison Medical Center ER nurse Amanda Lancheros have joined thousands of health care professionals in aiding New York City's hospitals during an unprecedented onslaught of sickness brought by the COVID-19 pandemic.

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It has been grim. In their first nights on shift, around 75 people died at their hospital alone, they said. The morgue has been overwhelmed. Refrigerated trucks outside the hospital take overflow remains.

"I think the hardest thing for me, being here, is that these people are here alone," Lancheros said. "When these people are put in the ambulance, essentially their family members are saying goodbye."

The nurses will sometimes have time to scramble through pants pockets to find a phone, and help someone dial a loved one for a final phone call. Other times the nurses must be the last of their earthly contacts.

"You have to hold their hand and be their family," she said.

'Worst conditions I've ever seen'

One week into their three weeks of service, the two nurses are adjusting to the rhythm of the night shift. They rise around 4:30 p.m. each day in a hotel full of nurses.

Boarding a bus for the Bronx, it's not uncommon to hear cheers from the residents that tower in buildings above. Everyone in New York City, from the staff at the hospital to passersby, appears grateful.

"We see this as we’re doing our job," Lancheros said. "We don’t see this as something brave. But people have been so thankful."

Even before COVID-19, Lincoln Medical Center in the Bronx was the busiest single emergency department in New York City and the third busiest in the country. Lancheros agreed that to call it a war zone feels accurate.

In just a week, her own definition of her job — a career she's worked in for a decade — has been fundamentally altered.

"My definition of 'sick,' as a nurse, has changed," Lancheros said. "It's the worst conditions I've ever seen."

What would overwhelm most people is the challenge Enright and Lancheros signed up for. Thanks to social distancing and other policies aimed to keep Harrison's emergency department as available as possible, the pair of nurses found themselves not being able to help patients in the pandemic the way they wanted to.

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So they decided to take a risk: a contract to help COVID-ravaged New York City. Though their schedules had been covered at Harrison, Enright said they didn't even find out from their employer that they'd been approved to go until their layover in Washington, D.C.

The pair had around a dozen people on board their entire first flight. An attendant, upon hearing what they were doing, volunteered a free three-night stay in her Florida Airbnb when the pandemic subsides. Landing at LaGuardia Airport was eerie. Everything was closed. The Uber ride into Manhattan to a hotel housing nurses near Times Square took 15 minutes. The streets of the city that never sleeps were empty.

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Enright admitted it was tough to leave behind her husband, Chad, Kitsap County prosecutor, and her two children, 12 and 9. But her experience in the Peace Corps, along with knowing all family obligations outside work had been canceled, pushed her to pursue it.

"I'll never have nothing on the calendar again," she said.

'Literally, it is everywhere'

First thing upon arriving at the hospital's first floor is getting "PAPR'd up," and it's a process. Over their scrubs goes another set of paper ones, a surgical gown and booties over shoes. A bonnet covers hair; an N95 mask goes over the mouth topped with a surgical mask. A face shield of plastic covers all.

What they found at Lincoln was in stark contrast to the emergency room in Bremerton: gurneys filling hallways, patients so close they could touch each other in rooms. Every so often, a patient that's not there for coronavirus comes in. Enright recalls a man with broken bones in his face, waiting seated in a line of chairs against a wall.

"I just feel so bad," Enright said. "We assume that if you’re in the emergency room and you don’t have COVID, you do now."

They get a lunch break, but the nurses said it's wise not to consume too much fluid. Going to the bathroom means changing out of protective gear. So they charge through it.

"Literally, it is everywhere," she said. "We feel like we’re walking through COVID."

Those who have it display it conspicuously: cough, shortness of breath, diarrhea, a plummeting oxygen saturation and surging fever and heart rate.

At Harrison, their caseload is about three patients at a time. In New York City so far, they've had upwards of 12 at once.

Enright said she's been impressed at the hospital staff's ability to learn as they go. A technique that can relieve the fluid in the lungs has been to put patients "prone" onto their stomachs. Their objective is to get the patients stabilized to go to an upper floor from the emergency room — admitted into the hospital where they can attempt a full recovery. Sometimes that's just not possible.

Both nurses said they do fear getting sick but feel their precautions and protective gear are keeping them safe. The two nurses will remain in New York until at least April 26, with the option to extend.

When it's all over, at 7 a.m., the two take a minute to stand outside and take in the cool air. Then, its a bus ride back to their hotel for a day's sleep.

"Then, we do it all again," Lancheros said.

In the thick of the experience, Lancheros tries not to think about the severity of it all too much.

"All I try to think is 'How do I save this person’s life?'" she said.

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Reach Kitsap Sun Reporter Josh Farley at josh.farley@kitsapsun.com.