'The Separate and Unequal Health System' Highlighted By COVID-19
On a recent Friday afternoon, the critical care charge nurse at a South Los Angeles hospital tries to send another nurse off to grab lunch. Maria Arechiga is interrupted by the beeping of an alarm, the vitals of a patient declining, organs failing.
She dons a surgical gown and unzips a plastic tarp that hangs from the doorway of a hospital room — a makeshift isolation room on this floor temporarily transformed into a larger intensive care unit to make space for the patients that just keep coming. She slips inside.
Dr. Stefan Richter follows her in, both telling the other nurse to get lunch now, because later may never come.
There are two patients in the room. Within an hour, both patients' organs are failing. Arechiga yells for someone to call a Code Blue, a medical emergency.
"May I have your attention please. Code Blue, Code Blue," booms from the PA system.
Reinforcements arrive. In the urgency, there is practiced calm. A team helps each nurse, doctor and respiratory therapist put on protective gear before they go in to try to resuscitate the patients.
They lose one patient, get the pulse back on another. And
