An urgent, on-the-scene account of chaos and compassion on the front lines of ground zero for Covid-19, from a senior doctor at New York City’s busiest emergency room
“Remarkable and inspiring . . . We’re lucky to have this vivid firsthand account.”—A. J. Jacobs, bestselling author of The Year of Living Biblically
When former New York Times journalist Dan Koeppel texted his cousin Robert Meyer, a twenty-year veteran of the emergency room at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, at the beginning of the Covid-19 crisis in the United States, he expected to hear that things were hectic. On a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being overwhelmed, where do you think you are? Koeppel asked. Meyer’s grave reply—100—was merely the cusp of the crisis that would soon touch every part of the globe.
In need of an outlet to process the trauma of his working life over the coming months, Meyer continued to update Koeppel with what he’d seen and whom he’d treated. The result is an intimate record of historic turmoil and grief from the perspective of a remarkably resilient ER doctor. Every Minute Is a Day takes us into a hospital ravaged by Covid-19 and is filled with the stories of promises made that may be impossible to keep, of life or death choices for patients and their families, and of selflessness on the part of medical professionals who put themselves at incalculable risk.
As fast-paced and high-tempo as the ER in which it takes place, Every Minute Is a Day is at its core an incomparable firsthand account of unrelenting compassion, and a reminder that every human life deserves a chance to be saved.
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As many have said before, the Covid-19 crisis brought out both the worst and the best of humanity. Here is a remarkable and inspiring example of the latter. Reading Robert Meyer and Dan Koeppel’s book made me all the more grateful for the unimaginable sacrifices and stresses that the frontline medical workers went through. We’re lucky to have this vivid firsthand account.
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A. J. Jacobs, bestselling author of The Year of Living Biblically