coronavirus

They Did Everything Together, Until the End: A Mother and Daughter's Coronavirus Battle

A woman faces the “bittersweet blessing" of being hospitalized with her mother when they both fell ill with COVID-19

An emergency room nurse dons her face protectors after taking a break in a driveway for ambulances and emergency medical services vehicles outside Brooklyn Hospital Center's emergency room
AP Images

Glenda Johnson sat on her mother’s hospital bed, took her hand and told her it was OK to go.

But Linda Hopkins, her face tensed against the smothering pain of coronavirus-related pneumonia, was not ready.

"I don’t want to die," Linda, 83, replied, tubes feeding oxygen into her nostrils, her daughter later recalled. "It just hurts so bad."

The two of them had a wonderful life in Detroit, about as close as a mother and daughter could be, NBC News reports. They lived together, traveled together, shopped together, worshipped together, partied together. When they both fell ill in late March, they drove together to Beaumont Hospital in nearby Royal Oak, where they tested positive for COVID-19. They ended up in the same room, where they battled the disease together. Glenda, Linda’s only child, watched over her mother’s final moments.

"I have no husband, no kids, no brother and sister. My mother was all I had in the world," Glenda said in a recent interview. "Now my heart is broken."

Read the full story at NBCNews.com

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