good evening. tonight, we're about to take you inside the epicenter of the covid-19 crisis in new york. >> we are on the front line. we're dealing with tragedy every day. >> our team given rare, guide access. up close with the doctors and nurses treating a monster surge of patients. >> the young father of six telling his wife that he wasn't going to make it is one of the hardest conversations i've had. >> we're with one of their own who battled back from the virus. tonight, "nightline" inside the hot

>> must go through this about 20 times per day. it's routine for us now. >> for dr. william pascal and his colleagues working in the icu. >> double gloves. >> repetition is required. gown on. gown off. repeat. >> you get pretty good at putting these on after a while. >> they must change their protective equipment each time they check on a new patient. >> all right, let's go to our gentleman here. let's look at the vent. >> their unit in brooklyn is filled with people who are critically ill from covid-19. >> right now we have 22. and i think we're expecting two more. >> and there's no slowing down. >> dr. pascal, we need you over here, please. >> let's go. >> he's called upon to tend to a patient whose blood pressure and oxygen levels have dropped alarmingly low. so he tries a potentially life-saving intervention called

pronin. >> we basically turn patients onto their stomachs. >> is t worked. >> 83. it's coming up slowly. >> is spaipatient is out of the words for now. >> we spend a lot of the day putting out fires. jumping from one disaster to the other. >> this is life on the front lines. in the epicenter of our country's pandemic. new york i where at least 220,000 people have tested positive and at least 14,000 have is died. abc news was given guided access inside the medical center. >> do you know what we're down to? is it it it it it 50? >> is is is from the e

. >> nearly two weeks in a hospital at war with covid-19. >> one bed empties, another patient comes in. >> and the hurricanerculean eff every day. >> if we can help a few people, it's worth >> we initially, when this started tried to divide the emergency department between hot and cold zones and non-covid-19 patients on the other. as the disease has progressed and the pandemic's worsened, pretty much the entire emergency department is a hot zone. you just figure on who else is on tonight.

>> dr. john marshall runs the hospital's er where they've already had thousands of cases since the pandemic hit. >> i think there are 53 vebnts right now. >> dr. marshall has done his share of triaging, from columbine to soldiers in afghanistan, but he says covid-19 is unlike anything he's treated before. his team receives a patient in respiratory distress. the medical staff quickly gets to work. >> this kind of thing is happening multiple times an hour during the busiest times a day. a day or so ago we put 14 people on ventilators in a less than 1-ho 12-hour period. that doesn't include those getting other modalities. >> to help with the influx, the

hospital has set up field tents on the sidewalks outside the er. >> hi, guys. >> i did deploy with the air force and army in afghanistan, but i've given care out of tents before. we don't think about needing tents in the middle of the city. but new york city in general has been good about preparing for large disasters like this and coordinating the work between the hospitals. if it wasn't for that, we'd be in a much worse position. >> they've also put out a call for reenforcements. >> early march, the numbers coming out of new york started getting very, very scary. >> dr. astrid holland answered that call. she left her life in salt lake city to come and work here where she'd trained. >> seeing friends and colleagues being affected by it, i f i hadt it, if not me then who

>> what's bothering you? tightness? your chest? it started on monday, and you were just sitting down when it started? >> yes. >> and you have not had any fever or cough with this? >> no, but i have been taking my temperature. >> her patient was tested for covid-19 and then released. >> there's so much of the communication that we do in general is based on facial expressions and kind of trying to come up to patients, looking like this and kind of shouting to them a little bit makes that communication with patients a lot harder, i find. >> all right, thank you. >> now it's their eyes that tell us the story their faces can't. eyes that are worried. tired. and feeling their own pain. >> in one of the parts of our

job is delivering bad news to patients. honestly, it's one of the more psychologically exhausting parts of the job. >> dr. daniel nichola h h h h too often had to make the call no one wishes to >> telling someone that their family member may not make it, it takes a lot for, i don know. it takes a lot for you to be able to, you know, muster the strength. there are a lot of times that people get angry. there are some people that just accept it, and there are some people that cry.

>> there's little time for dr. nichola to deal request his own feelings. he has to turn back to running the makeshift icu. >> we are face-to-face with these patients who are breathing rapidly, coughing, and we need to place the breathing tube to properly oxygen eight them and keep them alive, but that requires us to be directly over the face of the patient. so you can imagine today we got called about 15 or 16 times to do this. i'm afraid that i might catch it and that i might spread it to the people that i love. i am scared that one day i am going to miss something or not change my gloves or not wash my hands at some point and bring something home, so i am

>> dr. marshall shares that same fear. >> my home life has definitely changed during this crisis. >> dr. covid is here. >> my boys call me dr. covid now. >> spray the doorway, too. >> give me a minute. >> the second i walk in the door, they immediately remind me that i can't go in the house more than two feet without stripping off all my clothes and hopping in the shower. >> would you guys be happier if i was somewhere else and not coming sonoma. >> no. >> my wife and i are sleeping in different rooms so she doesn't get sick and can take care of the boys. but we're still having dinner together. this is probably the one time we can leave you guys alone, because your friends' parents won't loet them come over anywa because they're quarantined. >> are you afraid we're going to throw a party. >> no, i tryust you.

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as long as they're abovele 88, i'm >> dr. john marshall and his team are conducting morning rounds. >> there's a moderate and high-risk group. the moderate are intubated. >> the emergency room is filled with people seriously ill from covid-19. many are having difficulty breathing. >> we're trying to keep a lot of the patients off ventilators and keeping them on high-flow

oxygen, giving them, 40, 50, 60 liters of oxygen per minute, even though we're applying advanced measures, some of these patients are continuing to go downhill and getting worse no matter what we do. >> for many of these doctors, their nightmares go beyond these walls. >> there's a couple of my patients that passed away that you know i don't think i'll forget their names ever. a young father of six who died earlier this week and telling his wife, who's in the waiting area that he wasn't requestigoi make it is one of the hardest conversations i've had. he, it was very unexpected. very sudden. >> do we have any shortages on the floor? >> the hospital leadership holds daily check-ins as they run through their latest numbers.

>> on top of the 20? >> those on the front lines know their exposure leaves them highly vulnerable. >> we found out this morning that we lost another teammate. i would like to ask everyone to just take a moment of silence and just reflect upon all the work that we're doing. thank you, everyone. >> but amidst the grief, hope still lingers. >> he's coming! >> after two woeeks at home recovering from covid-19, dr. paul saunders gets a hero's welcome back at the hospital. >> thank you very much. it's undeserved, but thank you all for coming to work and for working so hard in all this time. all appreciated by everybody, but thank you so much. >> and welcome back. >> happy to be back.

[ applause ] >> still got people coming in. >> back to work, guys. back to reality. >> this is surgical icu. >> is this the stuff you miss putting on? >> no, this is not something, this is the patient who was put on yesterday. so he's been on for about 24 hours now. >> in this crisis, dr. saunders is called upon for the most extreme cases, when a ventilator isn't enough. >> what we do is go to assess them where they are at the bedside and put in very large ivs that drain blood from their body, take it out of their body and run it through an oxygen eighter, it takes out carbon dioxide and puts it back in their body. >> you have a total of eight patient. >> stretched thin here and around the country, critical nursing staff. up from d.c. to help, danelle

quickly gets a crash course in life at this covid ward and then immediately gets to work. >> these people will be standing and talking to you, and their oxygen saturation is in the low 80s or like mid-80s. it's crazy. it's crazy how fast this disease. >> progresses. hi, sir. hello. >> hello. >> my name's danelle. i know this young lady's been taking care of you all day. >> 82 years old. okay? appreciate everything that's being done. le and i hope by the grace of god i have a few more years in me. if not, whatever he wants is going to be. god bless them, all that's trying to help. you know, you have a lot of young people here.

right? their immune systems are good, but they're still risking their lives. >> have you had the fear that this will be fatal for you, like, is that a real fear for you? or do you feel as if you, that this is not a reality for you? just because i've never heard it from a patient's perspective. do you fear? >> i hope i'm going to beat it. >> of course. >> okay? but i, so that are they say i'm doing okay for my age. >> you look like you're doing good. >> i'm a feisty old man. >> i see. i see. >> but the thing is, whether i beat it or not, i still have to atha say thank you to everyone who tried. and i have to say thank you to the young people, because they have their life. >> let me help you with that. >> i just can't imagine like what they're going through. my heart just goes out to him. i just don't want to get emotional at work, because i

have a lot of my shift to do. so i try not to think about anything that might pull on my heartstrings while i'm at work. >> at the end of the day, in a long war that's far from over, an ovation. that's so richly deserved. [cheers and >> it's a celebration of the essential workers that keep this city alive and keep it going, you know, through all of these hard times. it's unity. >> i don't feel like a hero. i feel like someone who has a privileged job that i love. and i do my job. but i do look at all my colleagues, you know, who keep coming to work and keep going at it and who are relentless, really, and i do think that they are, i do think that they're

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our profound gratitude to the team battling the pandemic. the hospital last night sharing this tweet, safely discharging now more than 500 patients and growing. and special thanks to our producers in the field, who went behind the front lines to bring us these heroic stories. that's "nightline." we'll see you right back here at the same time next week. thanks forting staying up with us u goodnight, america. ♪ pa, da, pa, pa, da, pa, pa, da, pa ♪ ♪ jimmy kimmel live >> from his house! >> jimmy: hello, i'm jimmy,