How quickly we’ve forgotten the early days of the COVID pandemic: the fear, the rising death toll, the uncertainty, the international lockdown, the suffocating masks, the dread of coming close to even our dearest family, the terrible slogan, “Six feet distance or six feet under.” And that was just for ordinary civilians mercifully removed from the hospital scene. How was it for ICU nurses?
Month after month, they experienced constant exhaustion, “hands raw from gloves and sanitizer and disinfecting,” deep lines etched into their faces from tight protective gear, isolation from young families to keep them safe, holding up phones for patients’ wives, husbands, children, and siblings to say goodbye on FaceTime, then bringing bad news, not telling their closest relatives anything, having no outlet to relieve their stress.
We who didn’t experience the tragic immediacy can only imagine the personal cost—to their psyches, their families, their own health when they inevitably caught COVID. Or we can read Susan Straight’s novel Sacrament (Counterpoint Press, 2025), which profiles four nurses at a San Bernadino, CA hospital, showcasing the intensity of what they endured.
We come to know two of the nurses intimately: Cherisse and Larette, cousins who love and support each other through the worst ordeals. A subplot springs from the immature choices made by Cherisse’s 15-year old daughter Raquel, terrified when (rightly) suspecting her mom has the deadly virus, taking dangerous ways to leave her distant, COVID-imposed isolation and reach her. The minor miracle of good storytelling occurs: we care what happens to fictional characters.
These nurses live in trailers near the hospital, away from home to spare their families, and each day walk through crowds of people camped on the parking lot, staring at hospital windows, hoping their loved ones might someday appear so they can wave their signs and flags. The families acclaim the nurses as heroes, bring them coffee and donuts, ask for special attention to one dear patient. Most touchingly, they single out Larette, who is also a professional singer, asking her to sing, sometimes over and over, a special song, maybe one their family member had loved since infancy or high school. What they don’t know is how carefully she’ll rehearse the song, even for someone in a coma, and maybe cry in the bathroom afterwards.
From the title, this may seem like a religious book, but the only overt reference to a sacrament comes in a poem the daughter Raquel is studying in English class on zoom: “A Sacrament,” by Paulann Petersen. “Drink what’s divine,” the poem says. “Let some of the sacred cling to your limbs.” It’s left to the reader to infer the connection, to see how the accompanying, intubating, IV placing, wiping, turning, and monitoring the nurses do routinely are sacramental actions: the divine caring for precious people through human hands. It fits the standard definition: an outward, visible sign that shows invisible grace. What could be more sacred than singing a terminal patient into eternity?
The novel, dark in spots, concludes on a hopeful note, with all the main characters we’ve come to empathize with gathered together in a remote area, watching the peak of the Epsilon Perseids display. Their delight in stars far beyond the grief and mess they encounter daily lifts our sights, too, suggesting that a vaccine will be discovered, the easy human interactions so abruptly paused will resume, COVID will end, life will return to its clumsy, beautiful best.
The healing hands of the wounded, compassionate Christ touch every historical moment, including ours. If in our fear and isolation, we missed the grace and heroism during the pandemic, now’s our chance to rediscover and savor it in this novel.
Image: From the cover of Sacrament
