– I just cried – VG

There are beeps from screens placed in a row in the middle of the intensive care unit room at Hospital Severo Ochoa in Leganés, just outside Madrid. In front of them, people sit in white protective suits from head to toe and watch closely.

An old woman is lying on the bed in the corner. The body is connected to hoses and pipes, but she is conscious. Not everyone here is, some fight hard to survive.

Three nurses surround his bed to adjust all the hoses. They work fast and know exactly what to do. They have been doing it since March.

– It is awful. We passed the first wave and now we do what we can, says nursing assistant Yolanda Halcón, as she dons a full protective suit in the outer locker room.

She will wear this for about four of the eight hour shift.

On Sunday, the government declared a state of emergency throughout Spain, and the Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, will extend it until May 9 next year.

– It does not come out of this

At most, the emergency service at Hospital Severo Ochoa had about 400 coronary patients at the same time. Not everyone could access an intensive care unit and it was necessary to choose who had the best chance of survival.

Falcon had to report ill for a period during the first wave.

– I just cried, I had nightmares and I felt completely powerless, because I couldn’t do my job well. Now we can, but we all carry the mental burdens of the first wave.

He walks quickly towards the doors of the intensive care unit while talking.

– Here nobody is good mentally, we are very affected.

The Severo Ochoa Hospital is probably one of the hospitals in Spain that has had the most corona patients, surrounded by an elderly population that is poor and overcrowded.

– We are completely exhausted, not physically but mentally. There are times when you think we will not get out of this, says the chief emergency physician Luis Díaz Izquierdo.

He looks at his colleague, who is leaning forward with his head in his hands.

– It is very difficult, says Dr. Ester Álvarez Rodrígez.

The intensive care unit usually has 12 beds, all of which are now occupied. In the worst case, the hospital had to be expanded and 33 intensive care patients were admitted.

– We are afraid, because Spain is among the worst in Europe. At the same time, we are now better trained and prepared, and we do not receive all patients at the same time. But there is still high and uniform pressure, and more patients overall, says chief physician Izquierdo.

Lonely disease

Antonio Cortada (76) sits on the edge of the bed and coughs. Here, in the room of the Gregorio Marañón Hospital in Madrid, patients with a crown receive treatment. They are too sick to go home, but not so sick to be put in intensive care.

– The worst thing about this disease is loneliness. But I don’t want to infect others then.

Cortada started coughing a lot in early October and arrived at the hospital last week. You have no idea how it could have been infected.

– It was a relief to come here and be treated. So I got good news today that I’m on the road to recovery, says the 76-year-old between coughs.

But the health staff at the city’s second largest hospital have had a hard time treating everyone. Inside his office, the chief physician Jesús Millán Núñez says he has lost two colleagues to the coronavirus.

– It was tragic. We have been very scared and we felt fear and insecurity because we did not know what was going to happen. But we have given everything, says Núñez, who has also caught it himself.

There are now 88 corona patients in his ward, but this round it is not the capacity or the number of beds that is the problem.

– Now the system does not collapse like the last time, the problem now is that we are all exhausted.

He looks down and the bags under his eyes fall even further under his glasses. The superior says that he expects an increase in the number of admissions in the coming weeks. Now they enter many younger patients, but he believes that the virus will spread to the elderly and that mortality will rise again.

– I always have the same feeling when I come home from a long day at work, where I wonder what I do here at home – I always feel like I should have been in the hospital.

Do not say goodbye

Back in the intensive care unit in Leganés, nurses and doctors pass between screens and beds. A man sits upright on his bed and stares straight ahead of him. A curtain separates him and his neighbor, who lies unconscious.

– Before going to work at first, my daughters always asked me to be kind enough to go home safely. I couldn’t relax at home, I was always on hold. Now he is a little better, but I get angry when I see the new infection figures on television, says chief physician Izquierdo.

His wife has undergone chemotherapy and his superior has had to sleep on the couch during the pandemic to avoid exposing her to the risk of infection.

Rodrígez is still sitting with his head in his hands in the staff room. She says she had to be separated from her family for four months because of her job, and all she did was sleep and eat.

– But the most emotional thing for me has been informing family members by phone. We are trained to do this face to face, but it is something else entirely over the phone.

There have been many heavy messages to give to doctors. Rodrígez believes that there will be many repercussions of the mourning for the population, because many have not been said goodbye properly.

Left nods, before continuing:

– I especially remember a 93-year-old man who was infected. He was in the emergency room and his wife was in the intensive care unit. He was not allowed to enter with her, and I remember him saying, “I’m so sorry, I can’t say goodbye to the love of my life. I’m going to die without seeing her. I get very upset.