I’m sighing as I walk through the hospital doors.

I smile with my eyes at the random people I pass.

The hospital staff, though – that’s another matter all together.

I pass room after room of Covid patients, PPE in boxes and bags outside the flagged, closed doors.

I see an exhausted housekeeper coming out of a tagged room, and I look at her with sympathy, saying “thank you so much for what you do!” I’m sincere. The housekeeping staff is working so hard, day after day. She says “thank you, ma’am” even as she’s hauling a red bag off to the soiled utility room.

A nurse and respiratory therapist run by, glancing into my eyes for a minute – a knowing glance, and I say a prayer as they whisk past me.

Soon after, a code blue is called.

A resident leans against a wall, eyes closed, shoulders down, dejected. In another time I’d reach out and grab her hand – but that time has passed into what seems is a distant memory. “She looks at me suddenly, the weight of the world in her gaze. “Hang in there,” I say softly. She drops her head and walks away.

I’m weary.

Oh, I’ve worked long days before in my 24 year career as a registered nurse – days where I measured life by the minute, for hours at a time.

Those days were here and there – anomalies. there were victories, too, and they gave me energy and hope.

No more.

Every day, life and death are playing out behind closed doors…and more often than not, death is the victor.

I keep the TV off.

When you are working the front lines, nothing anyone says about it means a damn thing. Not in the face of loss after loss after loss.

I tell my patients to stay out of the halls. I tell loved ones to keep on their masks, wash their hands, and leave out the side door.

That is, when the family is allowed to be with their loved one.

Most of all, I stress, stay away from the ER.

I look up. A helicopter crew walks by.

They are oblivious to the rain they walked though to get inside, and are grim as they pass the nurses station.

Weary.

Every day, the doctors spend all their precious time between patients trying to find higher levels of care for those who are walking the fine line between life and death.

Every bed full.

Every morgue full.

Weary.

Even as I help bring life into the world, I’m breathing through an N-95 mask. I try to express care through my eyes and tone. My gloves hands and hidden face – will they be enough for the faces looking at me, pleading for help?

I know I can pick up and work any day. Any hour. Anywhere.

Everywhere I go, they are desperate for help.

But I’m weary.

Last year was bad, but it turns out it was just a pallid harbinger of things to come.

This year is fierce, relentless, and is going after the young.

I’m not going to fight about it.

Not with what I have to see in the faces of those who are fighting at the front lines of uncertainty.