LENOIR, NC (AP) – Chris Rutledge peels off an N-95 mask from her tired face and reveals the silhouette it leaves behind. Her name and a small heart are covered on her face with a black stripe so her patients know who she is.
“I look awful when it comes down to it,” she jokes as she takes a breather during her ninth consecutive day of 12-hour shifts at a temporary field hospital in Lenoir, North Carolina.
Rutledge, a 60-year-old retired nurse from Lisbon, Iowa, is one of dozens of health workers treating coronavirus patients in 11 massive white medical tents set up in the parking lot of Caldwell Memorial Hospital.
The tents became necessary in late December when the virus began to rise through this rural community in the foothills of Carolina, overwhelming the hospital’s ability. The tents were pitched earlier this month.
“We have doubled the number of COVID patients in a matter of days,” said Caldwell CEO Laura Easton, adding that the hospital believes its cases peaked during the summer. “And we doubled our hospital census.”
The tents and suppliers are provided by Samaritan’s Purse, an international charity for Christian aid led by the evangelist Rev. Franklin Graham, based in Boone, North Carolina. The field hospital with 30 beds consists of four medical wards and a pharmacy for patients who have been discharged from the hospital’s intensive care unit and do not need ventilators. Four other hospitals besides Caldwell are sending patients here so they can use hospital beds for more serious cases.
(January 25)
“The tent is a narrow place for a person who has never been in it,” Rutledge said, referring to the patients as she washed her hands for the fifth time in a few minutes. “Some of them are very tearful and others are actually crying.”
But Rutledge calls her work a blessing. Three years ago, she left her full-time nurse to join short-term medical missions with Samaritan’s Purse. When the organization mobilizes its emergency response team (DART), Rutledge can be on a plane within hours.
This is not the first time that Samaritan’s Purse has provided assistance during the pandemic. The organization, which has partnerships in more than 100 countries, opened its first COVID-19 field hospital on March 16, 2020 in Cremona, Italy, when the virus first began to spread in the US and around the world. Two weeks later, Samaritan’s bursary tents were set up in Central Park in New York, where Rutledge and others in his medical team treated hundreds of patients in partnership with the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the state of New York. The charity also recently set up a field hospital in Lancaster, California.
While the work is physically and emotionally exhausting, Rutledge said she has no regrets.
“People asked me if I would do it again after the New York experience, and I said I would do it in a heartbeat,” she said.
Rutledge is grateful for a supportive husband who cheers her on at their home in Iowa. She said her religious beliefs supported her during most of the long days – along with moments of hope that seem to show when she needs them most.
She smiles and remembers the elderly couple celebrating their 49th wedding anniversary while struggling with the coronavirus, and how she walked the man to his wife’s ward to visit. Rutledge said she first cried when she saw the couple reunite. She cried again when they were cleaned to go home, virus free.
“It was wonderful,” she said.
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