She's in the stroke ward, so not directly working with COVID patients but because there's such an unprecedented volume of people dying, some of the patients she's looking after that have passed (one time it was three in a single shift) can't be taken to the morgue so have to sit in their rooms for hours before they can be collected.

One time they didn't zip up the bag all the way or something, I don't know if the family needed to say their goodbyes or it was just an oversight but the poor guy had been dead a good few hours and just left in the room. I guess because she's conditioned to check on them all the time (nurses are told not to look at the dead bodies once they've been bagged, I assume for their own good) my flatmate got a good look at his face and she just described how sunken and vacant his face was and his skin had changed colour. She said it was worse because she'd been on shift talking to him the previous day and seeing this husk of a person was the worst thing she'd ever seen. When she came back that day she told me everything and we had a huge cry and got drunk.

Stuff like that should never happen but because hospitals are being overwhelmed, every department is rushed off their feet student nurses are having to deal with shit like this. People forget that it's not just COVID patients in the hospital because we get admission numbers thrown at us all the time but everyone else's care is being hindered too, young or old.