As the wife of a New York firefighter, I’ve seen my husband, Patrick Gorman, stand at attention, white glove to temple, too many times, burying friends who made the supreme sacrifice long before their time was up.
And now COVID-19, an invisible intruder, is snaking through every single firehouse and precinct in the city, taking down New York’s Bravest and Finest in record numbers, leaving first responders more vulnerable than ever. And their families? We’re waging a whole new type of war.
“The numbers just keep rising,” said Patrick, now a battalion chief in Manhattan’s First Division, as we lay in bed the other night, scrolling through the latest coronavirus statistics on our phones.
He had just completed a 24-hour shift and was sifting through a department-issued email about the thousand or so “suspected” COVID-19 cases on the job. Me? I was quietly feeling for his temperature and trying to identify any symptoms of labored breath.
Now weeks into our quarantine, we have obeyed every single one of Cuomo and de Blasio’s directives, masking up to hit the grocery store and completely distancing ourselves from family, friends, neighbors and strangers. But when there’s a firefighter living in your home, it’s impossible to sequester the hazard that walks through your front door on a daily basis.
Boots on the porch. Uniform on the hottest laundry cycle allowed. Lysol in the work duty bag before it even reaches the closet. He has showered and changed. But he just kissed my 5-year-old. Should I panic?
New York’s smoke eaters are no strangers to poison. It’s in their blood. Literally seeping through their lungs. Each year when Patrick’s annual blood tests and scans come back clear, we breathe a huge sigh of relief. The danger still lurks — but that’s what they sign up for when they’re sworn in. Isn’t it?
Now their “brothers” are staying in hotels so as not to infect their infants, voluntarily sequestering themselves so as not to contaminate their pregnant spouse or their 70-year-old live-in mother-in-law. And that kind of information is not easy to accept. Should we be doing the same? Between the mortgage and tuition and the rest of our monthly bills, we can’t afford to pay for a hotel. But can we afford for one of us to get sick?
It goes well beyond the family Patrick was sworn into. The family he was born into is currently suffering, too. All three Gorman boys fight fire for a living and his two twin sisters work as nurse anesthetists in New Jersey hospitals. Brian, the eldest, a deputy chief and Division 8 commander, was hospitalized last month during his two-week battle with COVID-19 and has since recovered. His sister, Mary, who has been intubating patients with the virus for weeks on end, was recently sent home from work with a fever and body aches. My mother-in-law says the rosary every night. I like to think it’s working.
Each of them are essential to the city but they’re also essential to us. And all of the children, wives and husbands of these New York City essential workers are now forming a sort of secondary front line against the virus. It’s a situation that we didn’t volunteer for but one that found us anyway.
And until COVID-19 passes and the danger has subsided, I’ll keep spraying the boots, taking the temperature and saying all of the prayers. What other choice do we have?