Bearing witness.

I enter my patient’s room and hear the sucking click as the door slides shut behind me. Vacuumed silence, negative pressure—but all the pressure in the world seems to settle onto my shoulders, my head, and down through my back, filling my feet like wet cement.

I need to move. His oxygen saturation is dropping again. He’s grimacing. Is he in pain? I wonder as I step closer to the bed. My pulse quickens as I take in the scene before me: glassy eyes inset upon a sunken, sallow complexion; bleeding mouth; the imperceptible rise and fall of chest to the biddings of the ventilator; swollen limbs. A lock of hair falls into my eyes, but my PAPR hood prevents me from pushing it aside. His heart rate and respiratory rate are higher now. Maybe he needs more sedation. If only he could speak. I take in a measured breath of filtered air as I suction his breathing tube. Breathe.

The doctor appears and is talking to me, but her voice is barely audible above the steady stream of air rushing past my ears. We’re practically shouting. The plan, a combination of trial and error, science, and visceral, pit-of-the-stomach intuition, is shaky at best.

As she moves away toward the door, I want to call out to her, to beg her to stay, to look upon the suffering and feel its weight, but I am silent and she disappears into a sea of blue scrubs. I am alone in this sealed room with my patient, his only witness. I feel an obligation to stay a few moments longer, even if he is unaware of my presence. No one should suffer or die alone.

Eloquent voices of suffering across the ages.

Theater of War? I had never heard of it, and now I’m a panelist. Tonight. Weary and windblown, all I want to do is dash home from my shift, slip into PJ’s, and fall into bed, but I have this thing to do.

Two weeks ago, I got a call about a project called Theater of War that presents dramatic readings of ancient Greek tragedies via Zoom. The readings feature Oscar-winning actors like Frances McDormand and are used to open up conversations for frontline medical professionals about burnout, moral distress, isolation, personal risk, and grief.

I agreed to be a panelist without giving it much thought. I was skeptical yet intrigued. Now as I scurry to prepare for the 7 PM broadcast, slipping out of my scrubs and into the shower, I do my best to let all my memories and images from the day wash down the drain—a necessary daily ritual. My sister told me to wear a vibrant-colored sweater, so I pair a freshly pressed coral mock neck with gray sweatpants, camera ready yet comfortable.

To open our eyes and see the truth of this affliction.

Is anyone even gonna show up? I wonder as I settle into the couch with a splash of double IPA in hand. I need a drink if I’m going to spend the next couple of hours talking about my feelings after another long day in the trenches of COVID-19. The last thing I want to do is “connect.”

But here I am in my living room, one of tonight’s four panelists, tuned in alongside more than 400 clinicians from the Baltimore area, as Frances McDormand, cloaked by the dimly lit corner of her bedroom, delivers an arresting portrayal of the dying hero Heracles.

Her agonizing calls for someone to witness her suffering, commanding the audience to “open [our] eyes wide…take in the damage done by the disease to this tormented body,” uncannily echo things I’ve heard and seen in the ICU earlier today.

My hair stands on end as the lines between hospital and home fall away. McDormand’s savage rendition of Heracles’ suffering pierces me, her gut-wrenching wails penetrating my defenses. The dying protagonist becomes my patient—giving voice to the eerie silence of air hunger and pain caused by COVID-19—and, by extension, we the audience become a collective witness to this silent tragedy:

“It sticks to my ribs. It feasts on my flesh. It invades the lining of my lungs where it scrapes against my chest with every breath.”

As Heracles cries out in pain and we, looking on, shudder in the eaves, he implores us to see “the truth of [his] affliction”—the universal experience that is suffering.

A sense of unity.

At once, I am weightless, suspended across space and time, tethered to Heracles, to my patient, to the actors and to the audience—we are one. In the discussion that follows the performance, the audience, members of the local medical community in Baltimore, become a resounding Greek chorus, each giving voice to the myriad scenes of suffering that he or she has encountered on the front lines of the pandemic over the past three months.

The raw, open dialogue dispels the illusion of separation and reveals suffering as a stimulant for compassion and empathy, culminating in a healing cacophony of voices expressing hope and fear, redemption and betrayal, connection and isolation, restoration and loss. Theater of War invites each of us to expose our humanness—our imperfections, afflictions, soul-wounds and all—as we come together to give voice to the sound of suffering, especially for those, like my patient, who remain silent.

Caitlin McGeehan, BSN, RN, CCRN, is a critical care and palliative medicine nurse at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland. She was a panelist on a Theater of War production on May 24, in the midst of the coronavirus surge in her region.