San Diego

I write this an hour after finishing my shift in the hospital emergency department. It’s 1 a.m. A nurse I have known for a long time said to me as she left the shift, “In 18 years, I never felt the need to take a shower in the staff locker room so I could feel safe to go home.” Earlier she was at the bedside in a negative pressure room, wearing a powered air-purifying respirator as she helped intubate a possible coronavirus patient who’d crashed. The precaution and gear make the work feel more dangerous. “Will that...