Surge fades, but anguish remains for health care workers
LOS ANGELES — Dr. Christine Choi balances the iPad in her hands and scans the callers on the screen. It is a family gathering, pandemic-style: People in the foreground have video-called others, who have video-called a few more. A collage of faces peer back at her.
She asks them if they are ready. Yes, they say. Stoic.
Choi taps the corner of the tablet. The camera switches from her face to that of a lifeless man in a hospital bed. Their loved one, killed by COVID-19.
The quiet in the hospital room is pierced by wailing.
Choi is a tough, upbeat second-year medical resident at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, one of four public hospitals in Los Angeles County. But even for her, the pain of what she witnesses each day — what health care workers across the country have witnessed over the last year — can become too much.
In the spring, when little was known about how the coronavirus spread and health care workers feared falling ill, Choi volunteered to enter COVID-19 patient rooms. She enjoys working in the intensive care unit, where the
