COVID-19 can be brutal. The Times writer Roger Boys caught the virus in early March

just as it was starting to make its presence felt in London. Within days he was in ICU, sedated, intubated,

and on a ventilator to help him breathe.

While I was there, I was either an induced coma or close to one.

And so these days for me are missing days, just not part of my memory at all.

Roger survived, but it was a close shave. Since leaving

hospital he's been trying to reconstruct those lost days in ICU and every day

brings new clues.

I realize underneath the beard there would be quite deep scar tissue and that the beard was actually disguising it, which ran from the bottom of my ear to just underneath my mouth.

In the UK, more than 10,000 people have needed critical care to deal with the

virus, including the Prime Minister.

So what's it like to be an ICU with COVID-19?

You're listening to stories of our times,

from The Times and the Sunday Times.

I'm Manveen Rana. Today, surviving book your train on Uber and get 10% back in credits to

spend on Uber eats so you can order your own fries instead of eating everyone

else's. Trains, now on Uber, tease and sees apply, check the Uber app.

I think they put an oxygen mask already on my face and I was rattling through these long spooky tunnels but still quite conscious.

And as I'm progressed through the sort of bowels

of this hospital, I could see people staring at me staring through closed doors

with but with windows obviously they were unmasked and just looking at me as if I was a freak. And it was the beginning of this freak

show. I was a very strange

...