The sculpture smashed to the floor as I raced from my home. My heart sank that this beloved gift—a Jamaican sculpture of a face—suddenly was in pieces. No time to grieve her, I thought, rushing out the door with the broken mess behind me.
The sharp pieces of my sculpture would remain on the floor until I was ready to put them in a bag and reassemble them because my nursing work at Long Island Jewish Medical Center called. We were in the thick of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our community needed us. My colleagues were exhausted. With full-body personal protective equipment, dying patients in every part of the hospital, and no treatments or vaccines, we worked. Through unprecedented darkness, uncertainty, frustration, and so much deep, genuine fear, we worked.
When the pandemic was at its deadliest, I told myself that if I could take one step, things would get better. If I could just help one patient… If only there were a vaccine…
On December 14, 2020 I became the first person in the United States to receive the first FDA-approved COVID-19 vaccine. Now, as the world moves swiftly through the fifth year since the start of the pandemic, I often get flashbacks to that era which taught me the importance of public health and hope.
To mark that time, the National Museum of American History in Washington, DC houses and periodically loans for display the scrubs, work ID, and clogs I wore as a nurse during the pandemic’s worst days. They also hold the vial and syringe used for my vaccine dose.
These objects capture the day I received that first vaccine, and so many of the long days that led to it. I must have logged thousands of miles, and just as many patients, in those worn-out clogs. These items, such as my COVID-19 vaccine card and the vaccine vial and syringe are symbols of hope to me. Some days I struggle with my early memories of the pandemic’s destruction, when hope was all we had.
