Last year, my country, Italy, especially my region, Bergamo, became the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic. On the streets of Bergamo, we saw several armored tanks with soldiers, collecting the cadavers of those who had died from COVID-19. At first, there was confusion and disorientation; then, there was a growing awareness that everything must proceed with professionalism and humanity. I vividly recall the first night in the emergency room while receiving pregnant patients suspected of, or positive for, COVID-19. It was indeed an exhausting night. Nevertheless, it was a great opportunity to look into those women’s eyes and be able to share with them those moments of fear and uncertainty.

Together with friends and colleagues, we quickly organized some events to help those in need. I wish to share with you a webinar that I helped organize with doctors, medical frontliners, and health workers last October 29, 2020, during the peak of the pandemic in Italy. The webinar title was: “Fighting the virus: Rome and Bergamo Talk about Each Other: Testimonies and Strategies.” This webinar served as a debriefing for us, frontliners, who were engaged in an emergency situation and who were caught off guard by the onslaught of this new illness that took the lives of our loved ones, friends, and others around us. In this moving webinar, the stories of doctors from Gemelli Polyclinic in Rome and Giovanni XXIII Hospital in Bergamo—the Centers of the Pandemic—proclaimed a message: “Life, death, care, take care!” This webinar was a huge, liberating embrace, even if done only virtually, for it united the doctors of the Giovanni XXIII Hospital in Bergamo with those of the A. Gemelli IRCCS¹ University Hospital in Rome. It was a moment of great communion wherein doctors could not hold back their tears, overwhelmed by a deluge of emotions and memories, which only their professionalism can keep at bay in their everyday life, allowing them to function with clarity and competence. But the ordeal to which these doctors and health personnel were subjected last spring left an indelible mark, made even more painful by the harsh months that loomed ahead. Seeing so many people dying—among them, relatives, friends, and work colleagues—could make even a staunch professional with a proven resiliency falter.

One beautiful and moving testimony from this webinar was given by Dr. Massimiliano De Vecchi from the High Specialization Emergency Center of the Bergamo Hospital. In his essay, “I Saw Death Die,” Dr. De Vecchi allowed his memories to flow along with the wave of a sinister soundtrack, made of bells that ring to death, of the irritating sound of ambulance sirens announcing more sufferings, of the labored breathing of a father days before death, of the alarms from the monitors, of the high flow of oxygen, and the grimacing sighs of patients. It was a surreal world, where morphine quickly became holy water, and bulky PPE (personal protective equipment) became clothes of an eerie ceremony. There were painful memories—the caravans of military tanks that took our deceased loved ones far away; the bodies that quickly became corpses only to be disposed of, rather than being accorded the last rites, bereft even of the prayers of friends around the coffin—these memories are like wounds that do not heal.

“Death took away Gianni, my neighbor, and dear Mrs. Giuditta, who lived a few meters away. The phone was ringing for Katia, who lost her father to the coronavirus.” The virus indeed had upset the life of this community, taking away an entire generation of people from Bergamo. Moreover, it made kisses, hugs, and street chatter dangerous. It also revealed the most profound truth of our life—that its end is death. “This pandemic had led us into a Lenten season that ended up with the interminable Holy Saturday—the day of God’s silence.”

This text—recalls Dr. De Vecchi—was conceived during a lockdown evening. “I decided to tell not only what I saw in the hospital, but also what I deeply felt in my heart, the pains of being a health worker. I still have flashbacks from PTSD (Post-traumatic stress disorder). We all experienced moments of insomnia and nightmares, with images that suddenly burst forth from our memories. The epidemic had done away with any barrier between the caregivers and the patients. It basically put us all in the same boat.”

“It’s the end of another day”—echoes Dr. Ferdinando Luca Lorini, Director of the Anesthesia and Reanimation Unit 2, Territorial Social Healthcare Companies of Bergamo—“equal to hundreds of others we are experiencing this year.” “But I have learned more in those fateful days than in my entire life. I came out with broken bones, but fuller as a man and richer. I learned what it really means to be a doctor.”

Doctor Lorini lost his mother to this deadly virus, but he continued to work because there were people crying out for help. “I cried in silence”—Lorini admits—“as the people of Bergamo did… I believe we will come out a better person from this tribulation. Yet, when everything is over, our country will need to review our values, the meaning of life, and our priorities…”

“We lived an incredible moment from a professional point of view,” says Dr. Roberto Cosentini, Director of the High Specialization Emergency Center of the Bergamo Hospital, “facing a disease we did not even know, in a scenario that we had only read about in books. An earthquake lasts a day or two at the most, and then everything is about rescuing the injured. But this tragedy lasted months, with the enormous suffering of those patients, among them acquaintances, family members, and friends, who continually arrived in the emergency room, whose end we did not even see. It was the most challenging moment from a professional and emotional standpoint. But in the end, we made it through. And this cemented our ER (emergency room) team, making us feel that, even in the face of death, none of us were truly alone. At some point, despair gave way to gratitude in our hearts.”

“To see people die who were healthy two days before,” recalled Professor Francesco Franceschi, Director of Emergency Medicine and First Aid of the A. Gemelli IRCCS University Hospital, “had a huge emotional impact on us.” “I remember a patient friend whom we initially followed from home and then had to be ferried out by an ambulance to the emergency room to be hospitalized in the sub-intensive unit. Both his wife and children tested positive for COVID. And his only thought was for his 90-year-old mother he had lost contact with. We immediately sent an ambulance for her and found her in poor condition but alive. She hadn’t eaten for two days. We managed to have her admitted to the same hospital as her son, who finally got to see her again via a video call (It was a good thing that during an emergency, we could equip patients with iPads to enable them to be in contact with their family members). Fortunately, my patient friend’s story had a happy ending.”

And there were also those who found themselves passing one moment to the next, from donning doctor’s vests to hospital pajamas. Such was the story of Dr. Luigi Frigerio, Director of the Maternal, Child and Pediatric Department of the Bergamo Hospital, who contracted COVID-19. Thus, from being the physician, he suddenly became a patient. “The night between March 17 and 18,” recalled the gynecologist, “I was struggling in the emergency room. I felt so much gratitude when a nurse provided me with oxygen. I suddenly became a patient in a hospital where I have been working for twenty years.

And during my hospitalization, Brother Pier Giacomo came to see me to give me the anointing of the sick. My next-bed neighbor, Mauro, 36, a father of two, was very impressed with my request. Yet, I reminded him that that sacrament was not a sacrament of death but a sacrament of healing. And so, he also requested to receive the sacrament. March 19 was my birthday and also the feast day of St Joseph, my patron saint. I saw the blue light of the sky through the oxygen helmet. On the wall of the opposite side, a mute crucifix. And around me, an orchestra of doctors and nurses did their best to treat the sick, interpreting a symphony that had never been written in any medical book. We were treating a disease we did not know of in our field. So, everyone did his job well. Yet, there was also empathy, affability, and kindness accorded the sick that really moved me. Moreover, I saw the attentive gaze of those who cared and the heart of those who looked after our exhausted bodies. Death was there staring us in the face. Like any patient, I felt the pangs of death, but I prayed that I could continue to live. I kept looking at that mute crucifix on the wall. A trust, which I would call “faith,” enabled me not to be afraid, even on the most trying days. On my way home, I had to relearn how to walk like astronauts who had just returned from outer space. And I felt gratitude and the desire to return to work with my colleagues.”

This pandemic does not only affect the respiratory tract, but also profoundly affects one’s psyche. “Solidarity, however, makes us strong,” reflects Dr. Daniela Pia Rosaria Chieffo, Director of the Clinical Psychology Unit of the A. Gemelli IRCCS University Hospital. “Without solidarity, freedom is an empty word.” “During the pandemic, many patients confessed to us that they felt cared for as children by the operators, because empathy is an emotion that circulates strongly in COVID departments. Yes, we all needed PPEs and emotional backup to make room for pent-up emotions to help us face this trying period!”

Last year, during the height of the pandemic, the scenario was a nightmare. I was in the frontline in the Gemelli Hospital in Rome. I was thinking of my loved ones who lived in Clusone near Bergamo, the epicenter of the pandemic in Italy. One fateful Saturday, I realized that the situation would worsen further. I had a moment of fear when I was at work in the hospital. Moreover, when I was out of the hospital, bad news came in that could have broken my heart and made me afraid. Yet, there was also the strength of the spirit.

The following day, I got up and heard the Pope’s Mass at 7:30 am. After listening to the Pope, and during that moment of adoration that followed, I felt inside a deep peace, a deep and immense peace. I said to myself, “I might not be that near to my hometown in Clusone, I couldn’t be that close to my family, to my fellow citizens, to many people who suffer, but I felt sure that I could give the best of myself, giving that last ounce of strength, that contribution by living every moment, conscious of the fact that every moment was sacred and a unique story.

But above all, I carry within myself the knowledge that hope does not die with this virus because life always has the last say.” Besides, during those days, I had the enormous joy of beholding the birth of babies like those of little Valentina and Cristiana. To me, it was a huge consolation to know that in the midst of difficulties and darkness, the enormous joy of these newly born babies and their happy faces clearly say: “Forward, always forward!” “We will win over this!” “Indeed, there is still hope!”

Antonia Testa

The author is an Associate Professor of Gynecology and Obstetrics, at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Italy.

¹ Scientific Institute for Research, Hospitalization and Healthcare