“I think it was Friday night or Saturday night, I had a bad COVID patient who needed to be admitted — again, 16 liters of oxygen and very sick, and he was ready to go at 9 p.m.,” Kinney said. “Now, I knew that he needed to be admitted, and the hospitalist down in Boise agreed that he needed to be admitted. There was not a bed available for him until 2 a.m.”
Kinney told the man he would keep doing his best to take care of him in the ER for the next five hours.
“What’s going to happen at 2 a.m.?” the man asked.
Kinney had to be honest. There’s one reason a bed opens up at 2 a.m., he said.
“There’s a chance that your bed is going to be made available by somebody else dying,” Kinney said.
The patient’s face was covered by an oxygen mask, but Kinney could see the man’s eyes. He was terrified.
The patient did get that bed in Boise at 2 a.m. But he declined rapidly. He, too, recently died, “making room for someone else,” Kinney said.
— pretty dark.