Oklahoma Nurse Answers Call To Help In New York Amid Coronavirus Outbreak

A Sapulpa Nurse responded to a call for help in New York’s hospitals crowded with COVID-19 patients. She’s working night shifts at a hospital in the Bronx.

"I can't be there for every one of them" said Jennifer Wilson, a registered nurse who most recently worked for a home health agency in Oklahoma.

"I found the man’s cell phone, the man who I was sitting with. He was on a ventilator. I played video from his phone of his daughter singing. It was the first time we had seen any sign of life from him. I don't know how to be here for every one of them, but I cannot, I refuse, to sit there and let them die alone, even if it's the hand of a stranger, is better than no one. It's heartbreaking,” Wilson said.

Wilson, on her first day, April 2, had another nurse collapse in her arms.

"She just told me 'I can't breathe' and that's the last thing she said before she just collapsed," she said.

Wilson said the nurse had worked 16 days in the row without going home because she didn't want to expose them.

Wilson is writing Facebook posts, hoping to reassure her family she's fine, while also raising the alert about what she's seeing in a hospital surrounded the greatest concentration of cases in the United States.

"It's scary, but that's why I'm here. I came here because I want to make a difference. I want to support my fellow nurses. We are a team. I just want to do my part," said Wilson.

In her posts from New York, she said the hospitals are short on ventilators, medication and staff.

"Unless you are here in these trenches you cannot possibly imagine what we are seeing. Patients that were deemed ‘unsavable’ are literally dying with no family, no one holding their hand, no comfort medication to ease the pain of passing from this life to the next. My heart is broken, my emotions are overwhelming, my fear is rising and I'm exhausted," she said.