There. Okay. Now I think it's recording. Are you there? I'm still here. Perfect. Okay. I think it's recording.

Our colleague Anna Wilde Matthews is a health reporter. And since March of 2020, she's been regularly talking on the phone with a physician and

belling him Washington. The doctor's name is Christine Hancock. Christine works in a federally funded clinic and serves a very vulnerable population. She sees a lot of elderly patients and most have serious health conditions. Early on, Christine was grappling with what was happening.

Is it safe to go to the clinic and can I go to the grocery store? It's just like so much like uncertainty, I think. And yeah, and this was going to be a straightforward pandemic story because Christine feared many of her patients would be hit hard by COVID.

I thought it was going to be about and she thought it was going to be about the devastating impact that COVID-19 would have on her patients. We thought.

It seemed likely that many of her patients could be infected and could become very, very sick. And that was the story. I think both she and I thought we'd be telling.

Instead, after nearly two years, Christine is facing a different and more insidious health crisis in the shadow of the pandemic.

Welcome to the journal our show about money, business and power. I'm Kate Limbaugh. It's Friday, December 17th.

Coming up on the show, the hidden medical toll of this pandemic as seen through the eyes of one doctor.

So, Ana, can you introduce us to Christine Hancock? Dr. Hancock is a primary care physician. She works at C-Mark Community Health Centers, a clinic in Bellingham, Washington.

She's 40 years old. She serves a group of patients who have a lot of challenges, people who are low income, some on Medicaid, some uninsured.

She has approximately 1900 patients who she oversees.

It's like the first time that I haven't been at work or working for like since I left talk to you because I was on call all weekend.

She, as a physician and as a person, I think she's very meticulous. She's very careful.

Colleagues described her as incredibly thoughtful. She's the colleague who would remember people's birthdays. She's the colleague who would check in about your kids.

Did you feel that? Did she ask about you? She did. We're both moms.

And I know my husband's like, why don't they make them do the assignment during the class period?

So, we talked sometimes about our kids and she could sometimes, as we talked over many months during the pandemic, both of us sometimes working from home, we could hear each other's children in the background.

But I have a phone call right now. You'll forget to go to grandma and grandpa.

Anna first started recording her phone calls with Christine at the beginning of the pandemic. And much of what you'll hear today comes from the recordings Anna made over those many months.

In the first weeks after they started talking, Anna tried to get a feel for what was happening at Christine's clinic.

Was she overwhelmed with COVID cases? How sick were her patients getting?

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