After more than three weeks on the ventilator, after battling weakness and delirium on the general medical floor and a stay at the long-term rehab hospital where she rebuilt the strength to walk again, my patient had made it home. The dark shadows beneath her eyes were fading. Her skin was tanned. The persistent shortness of breath had finally abated, and she had recently run four miles to commemorate four months since she was diagnosed with Covid-19.

Four months. I closed my eyes and found myself once again in those early days of the pandemic, clustered outside her room with a team of doctors and nurses. Nearly two weeks in, she still needed high levels of support from the ventilator and we were starting to talk about the impossible decisions we might face if her lungs never improved. But we waited, because this was a new virus and we did not know its course, and because we had the resources to do so. And now there she was, in clinic - months later, doing far better than I would have predicted.