You're listening to Shortwave from NPR.

So this story begins in Queens on the evening of Tuesday, April 7.

Queens is a burrow in New York City, like a lot of New York Queens is generally very dense,

and a lot of people who live in Queens are essential workers, people who work in healthcare

at retail stores that are still open in transportation and construction jobs.

And Queens has been hit really hard by the pandemic.

So the number of cases in Queens has been really high and multiple hospitals there have

been either filled or overfilled, meaning they don't have enough beds and staff for everyone

who arrives.

So that Tuesday evening, this is according to the city's Department of Emergency Management,

one of those hospitals, Flushing Hospital Medical Center, had a problem.

The oxygen system for the hospital was acting up.

And it became clear that there were too many critically ill people hooked up to it,

like using oxygen all at once, because it wasn't designed for that many people, and it

was in danger of failing, which would mean that people who were relying on the oxygen

could die.

So what did the hospital do?

Like could they get additional oxygen or move the patients to a hospital in another burrow

that isn't at capacity?

They needed to do that, but these patients, they were really sick.

They were all on ventilators, moving them safely was difficult.

And to make matters worse, another hospital in Queens also had the same problem that night.

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