In the spring the sirens didn’t stop,
and I was still learning—
a student CNA
suddenly assigned to the COVID ICU,
where even comfort
came second to survival.
We wrapped ourselves in masks,
in gowns, in fear—
watched rooms fill faster than they emptied,
watched families disappear behind phone screens
or not appear at all.
No visitors.
No hands held.
No goodbyes.
I learned to hold a hand I couldn’t touch—
not with fingers,
but with voice.
Wrapped in plastic and protocol,
I stood at bedsides like a shadow
pretending not to shake.
She was one of many,
an elderly woman, alone—
oxygen hissing, body frail,
skin gray with the weight of days spent fighting.
Her chart said Do Not Resuscitate.
Her room said: No one is coming.
The nurses rushed past,
chasing codes and crashing stats.
And I—just a student—
stood still.
There was nothing in my training
about how to say goodbye
without a hand to offer.
But I stayed.
Her name was written on her wristband,
but I read from deeper lines:
a daughter, a sister,
a lover of peaches and crossword puzzles,
a woman who once danced barefoot
on a kitchen floor.
I spoke her life aloud
as if naming it could keep her anchored—
listing her children
like saints,
her stories
like scripture,
her chart like a prayer
I wasn’t sure how to end.
The mask hid my trembling lips.
The gloves muted the warmth of my skin.
The walls sealed us off
from the world she was leaving
and the family she’d never see again.
And yet,
in the quiet of that room,
she was not alone.
I had nothing to offer
but presence—
a silent vigil
for a stranger whose absence
would echo through the halls
long after the machines went still.
No textbook taught me this:
how to comfort with a chart,
how to mourn behind a face shield,
how to witness a life
without laying a hand on it.
But medicine lives here too,
in the space between breaths,
in the dignity of being seen,
in the soft and sacred act
of not turning away.
Even now,
I don’t know if she heard me.
But I do know—
when the world locked its doors
and love had to find new forms—
I learned to be the hand
she could not hold.
