During the worst months of the pandemic, intensive care nurse Scott Brickner would sit by COVID-19 patients as they took their last breaths. “I never allow a patient of mine to die alone. Ever,” says Brickner, who works at a large university hospital in Los Angeles.
Brickner witnessed death daily in the surge that began in November 2020. Most of his patients were placed on ventilators, and few improved. “The hard part wasn’t necessarily just death — death would have been a respite for some of these patients," he says. "Instead, you were watching these patients cycle through a terrible thing.
