No One Dies Alone
NOTE: I published this back in 2020 when we were first realizing the impact of COVID on New York City and its most vulnerable institutions— public hospitals.
No one dies alone.
That should be our measure during this crisis.
--
So. Funny story. Last Saturday, about 11pm, I text my boss with a crazy idea. A friend of ours is a doctor at Bellevue Hospital -- America’s oldest public hospital. And she tells us that COVID patients at Bellevue are dying alone, isolated from their families.
Ok, not a funny story. Pretty heartbreaking actually.
And this friend-- Dr. Ee Tay-- has a birthday wish that she has posted to Facebook. She wants her friends to donate 150 iPads to Bellevue.
So patients don’t die alone.
I ask her “Are you trying to do this one iPad at a time?” And she replies “How else can I do it?”
Paraphrasing here because it's hard to focus when you’re devastated.
So-- like I said-- I text my boss Bridget-- the CIO of our company-- and ask her if we can help. She’s in. She immediately texts our CEO Todd, who-- and I kid you not-- immediately replies with just “Do it.”
Seventy two hours later-- and through some heroic work by what the outside world calls “IT workers”-- iPads are delivered, not to just Bellevue but two other public hospitals in NY -- Elmhurst and Jacobi.
And not onesie twosies. By Tuesday, our team-- two guys named Tushar and Mike-- had hand delivered 200 iPads. Driven to the hospitals in Mike car. And yes, they wore face masks.
By the end of the week, we had landed 600+ iPads for more than a dozen public hospitals and nursing homes.
So… there you go.
Lessons I’ve learned in the past week:
I was afraid to call Bridget but that’s not on her. She’s been doing these kinds of things for as long as I’ve known her. It’s on me. I thought she’d think I’m a sappy idiot. I am... by the way. So lesson one was “get over yourself.”
My boss and her boss didn’t say yes because they’re leaders. It’s the other way around. They’re leaders because they live their values; they say yes at the speed of texts when they can help.
I actually do trust institutions because each one is just the daily collective actions of its people. It’s easy to forget that those institutions exist because we can do more together. Yes, they suffer from scale, but we don’t yet have a better answer.
The biggest lesson though is -- don’t wait for someone else to do the right thing. Have faith that everyone else wants to join you, to make a difference.
Easy enough.
Your turn.