Over 1 million people among the 96 million COVID-19 cases in the U.S. have died. Indiana makes up 2 million of those cases and 25,000 of those deaths, according to the CDC.

Behind the scenes, as these numbers continued to grow, nurses and doctors were scrambling to keep up. There was no course in college that taught them how to handle a worldwide pandemic, a class that would prepare them for the hardships and struggles they would face watching people die alone with no family from a disease that nothing was known about. They were on their own to figure out how to protect themselves and their patients.

They became known as the heroes of the pandemic, even though they didn’t feel like it.
“It was terrifying. It was wildly anxiety-provoking,” said Hannah Thorn, pediatric surgery service specialist at IU Health North Hospital, remembering the fear she felt as a new nurse working in an environment with so many unknowns.
The pandemic unfolds
COVID-19 sent the world into shutdown. After being labeled a pandemic by The World Health Organization on March 11, 2020, countries across the globe started going into lockdown. Everything was closing: restaurants, stores and businesses. Even students were sent home to work virtually. Many believed that this lockdown would only last for a couple of weeks, but it ended up expanding into the summer with students not returning to in-person classes until the fall.
As many hospitals were becoming overwhelmed with the number of patients, some colleges partnered with hospitals to offer medical students their diplomas early so that they could help.
According to an article by The Harvard Gazette, Harvard Medical School students, among other schools across the globe, were given the option to get their degrees early so that they could start working in hospitals where staff might be overwhelmed. Many hospitals were getting extra help from these students and recent graduates, who weren’t having an easy time.
They had just graduated and felt like they were ready to take on the world and start their careers. They had expectations of what being a nurse would look like. But the pandemic changed what that would actually be.
“I had only been a nurse for a month and a half when I got sent to (the ICU). To be a new grad nurse going into an environment that was so unfamiliar, and with so much unknown surrounding the virus at that time, it was incredibly fearful,” Thorn said.​​​​​​​
Despite the extra help, hospitals were still overwhelmed. Anna Smith, ENT plastics and oral maxillary service specialist at IU Health North Hospital, and Thorn were relocated from the surgical unit to the ICU, an environment that was different from what they were used to.
It was the middle of the night at the height of the pandemic and all that could be heard throughout the hall of the COVID-19 wing was the beeping sound of a patient repeatedly hitting their call light. Smith was on shift at the time and went to investigate.
The patient with COVID-19 was getting lonely. She kept hitting her call light not because she needed medical attention but because she wanted someone to talk to. While Smith was in her room, she noticed a book of devotionals sitting on the table beside her bed. She asked if it would be alright if she read some to her.
For 20 minutes, four times throughout the rest of the night, Smith read these devotionals to her and was able to make an emotional impact on her patient. When returning the next day, the patient remembered Smith.​​​​​​​
​​​​​​“That’s what it’s all about,” Smith said. “It’s about taking care of people.”
Although they wanted to take care of their patients, it wasn’t always the easiest thing to do, especially when they refused to be helped.
Thorn recalls interacting with a patient whom she had to beg to wear their oxygen and lay on their stomach.  She tried to do everything in her power to help, but they wouldn’t let her.
“You left that room just completely defeated,” Thorn said. “It was just heartbreaking to be trying to help these people so much and not helping.”
No end in sight
Patty Bowling is the director of surgical services at IU Health North Hospital. She says that the portrayal on tv of nurses and doctors being exhausted from long hours while serving as emotional support for patients was accurate.
“The family is crying because they can’t be with their family member who is actively dying, and you’re now that family member or holding that iPad so they can at least see each other’s face,” Bowling said.
According to IU Health, as of February 2022, there were 226 COVID-19 patients in IU Health Hospitals, taking up 13% of the hospital’s space, with 137 COVID-19 patients in the ICU and 162 team members in quarantine.
The leadership team, including members from each department of the hospital, did their best to help the staff within the hospital. Brown paper bags lined the halls of the hospital at the beginning of the pandemic, when they didn’t know how to protect themselves from this deadly disease. Each bag had an employee’s name on it and contained personal protective equipment that they would have to reuse over and over again because of the nationwide shortage.
The leadership team tried to stay up to date on the best practices for keeping everyone safe. As new information came in, members updated staff and put new practices into place. They continually asked the staff if there was anything that they could do to help them feel safe because just like the rest of the world, they were trying to figure out how to navigate this once-in-a-lifetime pandemic.
Throughout the hospital, it was hard to know what else was going on. The nurses and doctors were so focused on helping their patients to the best of their ability that they didn’t know what was happening elsewhere.
“Everybody working on the floors is drowning in the tragedy of it,” Bowling said.
“They’re working, they’re coming in every single day, and they’re putting in their hours, and they’re doing everything they possibly can, but every day it felt like it was never going to end.”
As a way to notify the whole staff that someone had beaten the virus,  the leadership team decided to play The Beatles’ “Here Comes the Sun” over the intercom.
“Every single person in the hospital knew that someone had recovered and was going home. To give them some hope—there are people recovering, it’s not everybody is here for months then passing away,” Bowling said. “It’s that little bit of light that you need to make it through one more day.”
Bowling was a member of the team that decided who would go where and do what. She was the one to tell the nurses that they had to leave their comfort zone and go work in an environment that was terrifying because of the many unknowns of the situation.
“As a leader, that was extremely difficult,” Bowling said.
On the leadership team, they decided to designate certain people to walk around the hospital and assist with PPE and education to help make sure people were as up to date as possible, especially because with all of the new information coming in from the CDC and other countries, the rules were constantly changing.
“The way the whole world united to come up with a treatment plan to get us through this crisis, to come up with a treatment and save as many people as we possibly can,” Bowling said, “I think that’s incredible.”
Bowling, Smith and Thorn, along with their coworkers, had to leave their families behind every day to go to work. They had to drive on empty roads, go into a scary environment, and risk bringing home the virus as their families were able to stay home and do puzzles all day.
But while they were at work, the community recognized them as heroes. Bowling remembers people holding parades and prayer sessions in the hospital parking lot as well as bringing staff meals and thank-you cards.
“I would say that one of the greatest things that kept us going was the constant recognition from our communities,” Bowling said.
The beginning of what was thought to be the end
On Dec. 14, 2020, Sandra Lindsay, a nurse in New York, became the first American outside of clinical trials to receive a COVID-19 vaccine, according to the CDC. Since then, over 627,854,963 vaccine doses have been administered throughout the United States, with 4,273,793 Hoosiers getting at least one dose—about 64% of the state’s population.
Indiana provides a COVID-19 dashboard as well as a vaccine dashboard to help keep Hoosiers and healthcare workers informed.
“The COVID-19 response was a multi-agency response that involved IDOH, FSSA, the Indiana National Guard, Department of Homeland Security and other state agencies, working together to get information and supplies where they were needed,” Jeni O’Malley, deputy chief of staff and chief communications officer at the Indiana Department of Health said in an email.
Berkley Rios, communications manager of the Indiana University Health Indianapolis Suburban Region, says IU Health requires all team members to receive the COVID-19 vaccine as a term of their employment.
“Vaccinating team members is a safe and effective way to protect patients and help reduce the spread of COVID-19 in facilities and in the community,” Rios said. “All COVID-19 vaccines currently available in the U.S. have been shown to be safe and highly effective at preventing severe illness, hospitalization, and death from COVID-19.”
Despite the vaccine and booster doses being widely available, many people refuse to get vaccinated.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey, those who were unvaccinated against COVID-19 in early December 2021 reported deciding not to for a variety of reasons, such as “concerns about possible side effects, not trusting the COVID-19 vaccine, their doctor had not recommended it and difficulty obtaining it.”
Although they could not directly comment on some choosing to not receive the vaccine, Bowling, Smith, and Thorn encouraged the public to make a difference by getting vaccinated.
“All I can say is vaccinate,” Smith said as Bowling and Thorn nodded in agreement. “Vaccinate if you haven’t already, it makes a difference.”
Healthcare workers suffered a lot of fear and anxiety during the pandemic. According to an article by the American Medical Association, in a 2020 survey of over 20,000 physicians and other workers, over half felt high fear of exposing themselves or their families to COVID-19, and 38% self-reported experiencing anxiety or depression.
To help healthcare workers take care of their mental health, Bowling says the leadership team would make sure the staff knew that they were there to listen to them, provide them a space to have quiet time, and help them as best as they could with whatever they needed.
The leadership team continues to try and help the staff fight COVID-19, whether it be mentally or physically, despite it being over two years since the first case was reported in the U.S.—because COVID-19 is still something that hospitals see every day.
“Covid is still here,” Bowling said. “It’s not gone, and it will be with us.”

FOOTNOTE: Recent Franklin College graduate Tabby Fitzgerald made this report as part of her senior project, a capstone requirement for those completing their studies in the Pulliam School of Journalism. Her entire multimedia project can be found here.