Desperate Hours: One Hospital’s Fight to Save the City on the Pandemic’s Front Lines

Drawing on 200 interviews with doctors, nurses, administrators, and maintenance staff in the NewYork-Presbyterian hospital system, journalist Brenner (Apples and Oranges) paints a fascinating and harrowing portrait of the Covid-19 pandemic in New York City. With campuses in four of the city’s five boroughs and more than 4,000 beds, NewYork-Presbyterian was critical to slowing the spread of the virus in the U.S. “Had NewYork-Presbyterian crumbled,” Brenner writes, “the damage to the nation and the world would have been many times worse than what we did experience.” She documents shortages of personal protective equipment, staff, and beds in the early months of the pandemic; deep frustrations with the “policy failures, inconsistencies, and incompetence” of state and federal agencies, which severely limited doctors’ ability to test patients for the virus; and anger among staffers, who blamed the system’s lack of preparedness on cost-cutting by administrators. Throughout, Brenner draws sharp, sympathetic profiles of doctors like chief of surgery Craig Smith, whose patients “referred to him as ‘the Marlboro Man’ for his taciturn demeanor and discipline,” and vividly captures moments of heartbreak and celebration, including a grandmother’s recovery after four months spent on a ventilator. This is a powerful look at life on the front lines of a pandemic. Agent: Amanda Urban, ICM Partners (June)