Photos Show Holy Name Coronavirus Patient's Final Moments

TEANECK, NJ — Louie, a coronavirus patient at Holy Name Medical Center, is dying. It's April 21. Just a day earlier he was sitting up, talking, eating, by all accounts living as normally as someone in a coronavirus unit could.

Then things changed.

"With the COVID virus they go downhill very fast," said Registered Nurse Julie Falasca. "They can be okay one moment and decline in the next."

In a Facebook and Instagram post on the Holy Name Health page, the hospital documented the moment, calling it "a cruel reminder of this unpredictable virus." Patch has the photos displayed below.

In the display, nurses surrounded Louie; a few held his hand, one placed their hand on his head. This care went on for hours, according to the post.

"We are here for you Louie," Falasca said over and over.

During this moment, Louie is on the phone with his caretaker, Mary. The two had known each other for 20 years and now, in his last moments, Louie hears her voice on FaceTime, surrounded by hospital staff.

These are the photos of Louie's last moments:

Included with the post are five jarringly intimate black and white photographs. The man taking the photographs, Jeff Rhode, is the multimedia specialist at Holy Name.

According to Falasca, just moments earlier they were with a patient who was getting their hair washed.

“It was a happy highlight that he went in to,” she said. “All of a sudden someone told me Louie doesn’t look right, and that’s when we went from that happy moment to Louie’s bedside.”

The photos and post are a document of the current moment at Holy Name, a look-behind-the-scenes of a hospital in Bergen County, which was, until recently, the county hit hardest by New Jersey's coronavirus outbreak.

According to the hospital, 1,430 patients with COVID-19, or that were expected to have COVID-19, have been admitted, and 210 of the patients have died.

In total, the hospital has "managed" 4,960 outpatients with, or expected to have, COVID-19.

According to Rhode, people in the hospital understand the coronavirus pandemic is "life changing", and he is capturing the moments as best he can in a rapidly changing environment.

"As things progressed people started to get used to what we were doing, and after a short time of it being frantic, it became very much under control," said Rhode.

For Falasca, she says the employees of the hospital are doing what they always do: just with more attention paid to it because of the surrounding circumstances.

"We’ve always done this, but now it’s magnified because of how many patients and how sick they are," she said. "We were born to be nurses, this is what our calling is."