18 THENEWYORKER,APRIL20, 2020
was leaving school, to make sure she
was coming over for dinner. “His life
was my mom, his mom, his grandchil-
dren, and his job,” Walkiris told me.
A
few hours after calling the ambu-
lance for Sanabria, Walkiris checked
in with him on FaceTime. He was in a
hospital bed, but she didn’t recognize
the walls and surroundings behind him.
“Juan, I’m going to kick your ass!” she
said. It wasn’t that she had any partic-
ular reason to distrust the care he would
receive at Lincoln Hospital, as opposed
to Columbia-Presbyterian; she just
wanted him to be at the facility she knew,
the place in which she had the greatest
faith. “I was born here,” he replied. “Any-
way, I just have a cough. You’re making
too much of this.” She told him, “Your
face is red. You clearly have a fever. This
is serious.”
A doctor in a hazmat suit entered
the room and asked for Sanabria’s phone
so he could speak to Walkiris outside.
The test results hadn’t come back yet,
he told her, but Sanabria’s symptoms,
including the images of his lungs taken
from a CT scan, matched the profile of
COVID-19, based on documented cases
out of Wuhan, in China. Walkiris flew
home that afternoon, and went straight
to the hospital. When she arrived, with
her suitcases in tow, Sanabria was in
quarantine.
Six years ago, Sanabria had asked
Walkiris to be his health-care proxy.
He was forty-six at the time, and in
good health. She never understood why
he raised the issue with her. But he in-
sisted—“I know you’ll take good care
of me,” he said—and she agreed. As a
result, she was legally allowed to enter
his room at Lincoln Hospital, though
doing so would have been extremely
dangerous under the circumstances. ThatMonday night, she spoke to him from
outside his door, again on FaceTime,
and they agreed that she would go home
and return in the morning. By then, he
had full-fledged pneumonia, and was
getting oxygen through a tube inserted
in his nose. His face had flushed to a
deep red.
At eight o’clock the next morning,
the doctor called Walkiris and asked
her to help persuade Sanabria to be in-
tubated. He’d deteriorated overnight,
and now needed to be on a respirator.
“Am I going to die?” Sanabria asked
Walkiris. “No, pápi,” she told him.
“They’re going to put you to sleep for
a little while, so you can relax your lungs.
You’re breathing too fast.” He seemed
dazed. “I don’t feel sick,” he said calmly.
“Will you be here when I wake up?”
“I’ll see you on the other side,” she
replied. “Let them do this.” As the nurses
prepared to intubate him, he bragged
about how his daughter was a nurse.
Just before he went under, he sent
Walkiris one last selfie.
By March 10th, Mayor Bill de Bla-
sio had announced thirty-six confirmed
COVID-19 cases in New York City. It
isn’t clear whether Sanabria was counted
among them. Most likely, he wasn’t yet.
It would be another four days before
the first deaths in the city were made
public. The patients were elderly—one
was eighty-two, another seventy-nine—
and they had underlying medical con-
ditions. It seemed inconceivable that
Sanabria would suffer a similar fate.
Walkiris returned to the hospital
around six that evening. The thought
of Sanabria lying alone in the inten-
sive-care unit had grown intolerable,
and she was determined to see him,
despite the risk of getting infected her-
self. “I figured I’d already been in con-
tact with the virus anyway,” she said.
“I may as well be exposed to family.”
She approached his room, but a doc-
tor, who had introduced herself as
Dr. K., intercepted her. Walkiris was
crying, and pleaded to be allowed in-
side. Dr. K. held her firmly by the arms,
and told her to close her eyes. “I want
you to visualize a conversation I’m going
to have right now with your father,”
the doctor told her. “Imagine I’m walk-
ing into his room as his doctor, and
asking him if he would feel comfort-
able with you coming in to see him.“Would you please stop feeding the pterodactyls?”