Difficult night

Started at 4 pm at a different ICU tonight. This ICU has twelve patients, obviously all on ventilators, all with COVID ,all critically ill. As the daytime physician and I were rounding on the patients, discussing the plan for each patient, a patient on our unit coded. We immediately went to that patients room, started CPR, gave multiple medications, with no positive result. This 62 year old man died despite our best efforts. The daytime physician made the call to the family. I could see it weighed heavily on his heart. But although he has done this many times in the last month, I'm sure it does not get easier. Six hours later another patient in our unit coded, the father of a nurse in this hospital. This time I had to make the call, the daughter was as distraught as anyone I've ever heard. I told her how sorry I was, that we did everything we could do, she sobbed and then the phone went dead. I called back not knowing whether she had hung up or that we had been unintentionally disconnected. The phone rang and she didn't pick up I left a message saying I wasn't sure whether the disconnect was intentional or unintentional, but that if she wanted to talk with me please call the unit back and I would be glad to talk. In about fifteen minutes she called back asking to talk with me. I again told her how sorry I was and told her details about the code. She thanked me and asked that I thank the ICU team and then asked if I could take down the pictures of family that were posted in her fathers room. I told her I would collect the pictures and put them in a bag to be picked up. Two hours later as I was leaving the hospital after my shift was over, I left the unit and heard a woman crying--wailing really. I recognized the voice. It was the daughter I had spoken to, she had come to the hospital maybe to be near her father even though she couldn't come into the unit. I bent down and introduced myself, and told her I was so sorry, that unfortunately this virus is so horrible and so many families are going through this. She thanked me again, told me she was glad I was there, and we hugged with our masks on. She said that she had been told I was a visiting physician and she hoped I would stay safe. It meant so much to me that in her grief, she was worried about me. I know that there are many places in the country that are not experiencing the surge of patients being seen in the east coast. But you need to understand this virus is devastating. Even if it doesn't come in these numbers wherever you are, there are an unimaginable amount of families losing the people they love. It was a bad day. That's all for now.