THENEWYORKER,M AY4, 2020 43
PHOTOGRAPH BY JEROME STRAUSS FOR THE NEW YORKER
corridor of an I.C.U. at Weill Cornell
Medicine, then opened a door and
walked into a room. Bright fluores-
cent lights; on the bed, a gaunt man
with paper-white hair, age seventy-
five. Intubated. His skin was nearly
translucent. He’d been improving,
and was breathing almost entirely on
his own through a ventilator’s tube,
which snaked between his lips and
down his throat.
The group gathered silently at the
bedside. The man lay still and
watched. He seemed to understand
what was about to happen. The re-
spiratory therapist reached with a
gloved hand to open the man’s lips.
Using a narrow suction wand, he
slowly drew mucus and saliva into a
cannister mounted on the wall, al-
ready half full of brownish-green de-
bris. The man looked into the thera-
pist’s eyes; the therapist covered the
man’s face with a blue absorbent pad,
to prevent aerosolized virus from
spraying into the room.
“One, two, three,” the therapist said.
He pulled the tube out in a quick, sin-
uous motion. The man coughed and
gasped. His eyes bulged. He took a
deep breath, loud in the quiet room.
A nurse stepped forward, placing an
oxygen mask over his nose and mouth.
The man’s breathing eased. Everyone
looked at one another, and exhaled.
A
s the workday ended, Max Rose,
an Afghanistan-war veteran who
represents Staten Island and southern
Brooklyn in Congress, was tying up
loose ends. For a few weeks, he had de-
ployed with the National Guard and
led a contingent of troops from the 69th
Infantry Regiment. Their mission was
to help turn a psychiatric facility on
Staten Island’s southeast shore into a
two-hundred-and-sixty-two-bed emer-
gency COVID-19 hospital. The hospital,
