A Nurse's Fear Is City's Loss

Arlene Meertens has been in nursing for nearly 30 years.

She’s the daughter of a nurse, and she always felt called to care for others, even as a young girl growing up in Guyana, where she remembers fetching water for an elderly blind neighbor. 

But, as a patient care technician at hard-hit Kingsbrook Jewish Medical Center in Brooklyn, she says  the COVID-19 pandemic has changed her, and she’s not sure if she can continue on if there’s a resurgence of the virus in the fall.

“I can tell you truthfully, I’ve cried almost every day,” said Meertens. Click on the audio player above to hear her tell her story in her own words.