My husband, Garold, and I both started coming down with cold-like symptoms in October 2020. We both took Covid-19 tests on our anniversary. They were positive. Four days later, my husband was having trouble breathing and our primary doctor told him to go to the emergency room. I drove him there and dropped him off at the door. I was not allowed to go with him.

He was admitted and started on the “Covid protocol”. This included administration of Remdesivir. I was not kept informed by staff of his condition or his treatment during most of his stay. Everyday, I had to make phone calls and sometimes I could speak to a nurse. No visitors were allowed so I couldn’t advocate for his care, see his condition with my own eyes, pray over him, and console him. Nothing. He was lonely, scared and desperate and so was I.

Additionally, he was supposed to be kept up, moving and also proned. Any time I spoke with him, none of this was happening. We were at the mercy of the hospital staff, who seemed uncaring. The evening of his death, I was allowed in because there were important papers he needed to sign. I was in full body hazmat gear. The headgear kept falling over my eyes, Garold couldn’t hear me because of the air being pushed through my mask. I had to wear gloves and so we were never allowed to actually feel each other’s flesh as I held his hand. He was having a hard time breathing with air being forced into his lungs and couldn’t talk to me because when he took off the air mask he couldn’t breathe.

We really had no last words. They made me leave him. In a few hours, he couldn’t take the distress anymore and took off his breathing mask. The nurses scrambled to give him drugs to help him as he slowly, agonizingly died from asphyxiation, alone and afraid. He had been confined to the death trap hospital for eighteen days. I am left with deep grief, flashbacks and guilt over the ‘what ifs’ and ‘if only I’d’. Garold left three children, two step-children, eight grandchildren, three step-grandchildren and many friends and relatives who mourn his loss terribly. A light was taken from this earth too soon. And my life will never be the same.