Shut inside my apartment, I spent the hours leading up to this appointment refreshing projections on ventilator use and daily deaths. What will next month hold? Next week? No one seemed to have any idea. I crossed into the third trimester during quarantine, working from home, reading the news, trying and failing to imagine what this city might look like by the time my child is born into it in June. “We’re not having patients wait up here any more.” I squeeze hand sanitizer into my palms while the administrator takes my name. Brooklyn Methodist Hospital, around the corner, has orange triage tents set up outside. We’re in the third week of New York’s stay-at-home order to try to flatten the curve of the coronavirus pandemic businesses are shuttered, roads are bare, people stand six feet away from each other in the lines in front of grocery stores. “Hi, sweetheart,” says the administrator at the front desk. This morning, I enter the obstetrics practice wearing maternity leggings, an oversized T-shirt, and a mint-green kerchief knotted over my nose and mouth. The results-heartfelt and harrowing-are presented here as a grateful salute to those who kept the world spinning in the year’s darkest moments. During the uncertain first months of quarantine, asked several novelists to chronicle their new normal with a tribute to the person helping them get by.
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