| Veteran journalist Elliott Woods happened to be finishing up a fellowship in late February at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor when the coronavirus pandemic really took hold in the US. Detroit, some 35 miles away, soon became one of America's hot spots for the disease. (On March 17, the University of Michigan hospital system had 14 patients hospitalized with Covid-19; by April 15, that number stood at 229.) Woods realized that he was looking at a huge story: He could cover the Herculean efforts of Michigan Medicine, one of the nation's premier hospital systems, as it geared up for a tsunami of patients. In the first installment of what will be a series of stories we're calling "The Hospital," Woods goes inside the harrowing lives of three Michigan health care workers—a doctor, a nurse, and a respiratory therapist. "Almost every single person I've interviewed for this story so far has cried on the phone with me, a perfect stranger," Woods says. He's reluctant to call them heroes, a term too often used cavalierly. But their stories speak for themselves. Mark Robinson | Features Editor, WIRED |
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