Source::AP
LENOIR, N.C.
Chris Rutledge peels an N-95 mask off her tired face, revealing the silhouette it leaves behind. Her name and a tiny heart are drawn on the face-covering in black marker so her patients know who she is.
“I look terrible when it comes off,” she jokes as she takes a break during her ninth straight day of 12-hour shifts inside a temporary field hospital in Lenoir, North Carolina.
Rutledge, a 60-year-old retired nurse from Lisbon, Iowa, is one of dozens of health care workers who have been treating coronavirus patients inside 11 massive white medical tents set up in the parking lot of Caldwell Memorial Hospital. The tents became necessary in late December when the virus began surging through this rural community in the Carolina foothills, overwhelming the hospital’s capacity. The tents were set up earlier this month.
“We doubled the number of COVID patients in a matter of days,” said Caldwell CEO Laura Easton, who added that the hospital thought it had seen its cases peak over the summer. “And we doubled our hospital census.”
This is not the first time Samaritan’s Purse has provided aid during the pandemic. The organization, which has partnerships in more than 100 countries, opened its first COVID-19 field hospital on March 16, 2020, in Cremona, Italy, when the virus first began to surge in the U.S. and around the world. Two weeks later, Samaritan’s Purse tents were pitched in New York City’s Central Park, where Rutledge and others on its medical team treated hundreds of patients in partnership with the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the state of New York. The charity also recently erected a field hospital in Lancaster, California.
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