'She Wasn't Alone,' A Doctor Reflects On New York City's Coronavirus Peak

On the night of March 30, just before 7 p.m., Dr. Ray Lorenzoni put on his face mask, walked across the street from the Bronx apartment he shares with his wife and started his shift at the Children's Hospital at Montefiore Medical Center.
Lorenzoni, 35, is in his second year of a pediatric cardiology fellowship at the hospital. But this night, the patients would be different: It was his first shift treating adult coronavirus patients — the first adults he's treated in the hospital since medical school six years before.
"Coming into the hospital, it was a little bit unreal," he says. "The whole floor was filled with adult patients."
By then, COVID-19 cases systemwide at Montefiore Medical Center had gone from just two cases a little over two weeks earlier to more than 700. In response, Montefiore transformed part of the children's hospital into a 40-bed adult COVID unit. All around the city, other hospitals were making similar adjustments. Medical students graduated early. Operating rooms were converted into ICUs. A field hospital went up in Central Park.