Nicole, a 35-year-old OBGYN in Boston, works a few 24-hour shifts a month, sleeping in a small hospital room with one window, one computer, and one cot. On Mother’s Day this year, she worked one of those punishing days. Nicole’s work spans the whole spectrum of reproductive healthcare—or what was left of it, during the months when her area severely limited clinical visits and procedures considered dispensable by the state.
To prepare for her extraordinarily long day, Nicole packed an entire grocery bag full of food so she didn’t have to spend time in the hospital cafeteria during her shift. In her apartment, she put on clean scrubs and tucked a used N-95 mask from another shift into her coat pocket, just in case. The hospital where she works has created an app to screen its workers for covid-19 symptoms: She opened it on her phone and ran through its questions.
And even when they were in the hospital, with many services until recently unavailable, patients who made it to the wing didn’t have access to the full range of options they might have desired. One mother Nicole saw on that shift, having recently given birth, asked for a tubal litigation—to get her “tubes tied”—but the procedure was currently on hold. Instead, Nicole and her patient settled on a Depro-provera shot, which would at least get her through the next few months.
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