Months of Chaos and Systemic Failure Are Wearing Down Health Care Workers An ER tech helps the Mercy Air flight team transport a COVID-positive patient from the ED at Providence St. Mary Medical Center in Apple Valley, California on December 22, 2020, in Apple Valley, California. Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images By Nurse Kristen Cline was working a 12-hour shift in October at the Royal C. Johnson Veterans Memorial Hospital in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, when a code blue rang through the halls. A patient in an isolation room was dying of a coronavirus that had raged for eight months across the country before it made the state the brightest red dot in a nation of hot spots.