THENEWYORKER,APRIL20, 2020 19
I’m telling him about the risks to you
and your family if you went in there.
What would he say? Would he want
you to say goodbye to his spirit in there,
or out here?” Walkiris told me later
that, in that moment, the doctor may
have saved her life.
The reality fully set in on Thursday,
March 12th, when a colleague invited
her to join a private Facebook group
of doctors and nurses at Columbia-
Presbyterian. One of the doctors had
shared a chart detailing the progres-
sion of fatal COVID-19 cases. Patients
who eventually died from the disease
entered the emergency room with nor-
mal heart function, then suffered total
respiratory failure. Under typical cir-
cumstances, such a failure would coin-
cide with sepsis or shock, but that wasn’t
the case for many with COVID-19. These
patients might appear to stabilize and
even to improve. Yet within hours their
condition would deteriorate once more,
this time irreparably, and their heart
function would swiftly decline. “It
was his presentation exactly,” Walkiris
said. “I can’t even explain it to you.
That’s when I really knew. All I could
do was cry.”
The next day, Juan’s blood pressure
dropped precipitately. Walkiris’s sister
and mother tried to visit him in the
hospital, too, but were turned away.
They told Walkiris to pray. “I kept tell-
ing them, ‘Look at this chart. He doesn’t
even have a few days,’ ” Walkiris said.
“My family didn’t want to hear it.” He
never regained consciousness after being
intubated; by the time he died, on
March 17th, no one had been able to
say goodbye.
T
he management company at 860
Grand Concourse sent a notice to
the building’s residents later that night.
“We have been informed that Juan
Sanabria, daytime Doorman has passed
away this morning,” it said. “His fam-
ily informed Management that he tested
Positive for Coronavirus.” That was the
only reference to him and his family
that appeared in the notice; the rest of
it listed a new battery of precautions
that the building would be implement-
ing—increased frequency of cleaning
and daily disinfecting—along with rec-
ommendations from the New York City
Health Department for how to avoid
spreading or contracting the virus. Many
of the residents were put off by the im-
personal tone, one of them, a journal-
ist named Alice Speri, told me. “I have
been thinking about Juan non-stop
since he passed,” Speri said. “He was
such a regular, happy part of our daily
lives. I know that every time I walk
through the building’s door I won’t be
able to not think about him.”
Georgeen Comerford was at home
when she received the notice. A few
days earlier, Jimmy Montalvo had told
her that Sanabria was sick. “I thought
immediately about the virus,” she told
me. One morning, while Sanabria was
in the hospital, she went downstairs to
ask James Tirado, who was on duty, if
he knew more about the situation. “I
can’t even talk about it,” he had told
her, choking back tears. She began to
brace herself for the worst—“It was
like you were letting air out of the bal-
loon,” she said—but she was still un-
prepared for the announcement of his
death. “It was a punch in the stomach,”
she said.
Early the next day, Comerford lis-
tened to the news on the radio. By
then, CUNY had moved classes online.
Isolated in her apartment, she found
herself trying to piece together how
Sanabria fit into the broader account
of what was developing in the city. He’d
been among the first fatalities. “Was
he the eleventh person who died? I was
trying to figure out if he was the tenthor the eleventh,” Comerford told me.
“That made this whole thing very real.
Before, the deaths were just statistics.
Knowing that one of them was Juan,
it gave the thing a face.”
At 860 Grand Concourse, every-
one’s anguish is now tinged with fear.
A week after Sanabria died, there was
another confirmed case of COVID-19
in the building. Montalvo and Tirado
were growing uncomfortable working
the door, and were trying to scale backtheir hours without management dock-
ing their pay. When we last spoke, at
the end of March, Montalvo was in
touch with a union representative to
figure out whether staying home would
count against his sick days. There was
money but also safety to consider, he
told me. They’d been exposed to Sa-
nabria themselves, and yet, in some ways,
that was the least of it. “We have a friend,
not just our co-worker, who died, too,”
he told me.
Meanwhile, because the cause of
death was COVID-19, none of the mor-
tuaries that Walkiris and her family
called were willing to pick up Sanabria’s
body; his corpse remained in the hos-
pital morgue for nine days before one
service finally agreed to help. A fu-
neral was out of the question. All of
Sanabria’s family members spent four-
teen days in quarantine. The only one
of them to show any symptoms was his
mother, who had stomach pain and a
low-grade fever. She ultimately tested
positive for COVID-19, but her symp-
toms remained mild; she’s since recov-
ered. Waleska went back to work on
Sunday, March 29th. She had been ner-
vous about returning to her beat—not
because of the coronavirus or anything
specific about the job. She would have
to patrol past 860 Grand Concourse.
“And that is where I’ll see him,” she said.
Sanabria’s cell phone, which the hos-
pital gave to Walkiris, was full of voice
memos and missed calls. Listening to
them, Walkiris heard friends of his,
most of whom she’d never met, calling
him Juanito and Juancho. “Everyone
had a distinctive thing,” she said. She
realized that he’d been as reliable and
routine-oriented with his friends as he’d
always been with his family; people
were calling because he used to check
up on them regularly, and, when they
hadn’t heard from him, they worried
that something was wrong. Eventually,
Walkiris signed on to his Facebook ac-
count to post the news. “Juan Sanabria
passed away due to coronavirus,” she
wrote. “My dad was a loving man who
was a respected son, father, and grand-
father. Please in light of what is going
on in the world please tell your loved
ones how much you love them. Once
the city allows us to have a service in
his name I will make sure to let every-
one know.”