‘Those patients’ faces have been embedded in our brains’: Mercy Medical Center in Springfield marks 1 year of COVID pandemic Updated Mar 11, 2021; Facebook Share SPRINGFIELD — Registered nurse Kathleen Bowers has spent many quiet moments holding the hands of patients dying from COVID-19. “As we have been there holding the hands of patients that have taken their last breath, we have been allowed to do Zoom calls and FaceTime with their families to allow them to say their last goodbyes, ” said Bowers, who has been a registered nurse with Mercy Medical Center for 35 years. She was one of several nurses and doctors who spoke Thursday during an event at the hospital commemorating a year since the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic on March 11, 2020.