Life on the Line: Young Doctors Come of Age in a Pandemic

New York Times reporter Goldberg debuts with a vivid and heart-wrenching portrayal of six doctors who graduated from medical school during the “first-wave peak” of Covid-19 in New York City. As the surge of cases “hit New York hospitals like a tsunami” in March and April 2020, some medical schools graduated fourth year students early so they could work at understaffed hospitals. Goldberg delves into the challenges her subjects, including the daughter of immigrants who practice traditional Chinese medicine and a young Hispanic woman raised by a single mother, faced as the health-care system failed to keep up with the demand for ventilators and personal protective equipment. Even Bellevue, one of America’s “most storied” hospitals and the nation’s leader in AIDS treatment, misjudged the threat: in January 2020, staffers were told that the “risk to New Yorkers is considered low.” Goldberg also sketches the history of medical training in the U.S., noting that reform efforts in the early 20th century led to the closure of Black medical schools and the rise of programs “designed for exclusivity,” and offers poignant scenes of her subjects coming to grips with the life and death nature of their work. This is a raw and emotional depiction of young professionals thrust into the middle of a crisis. (June)