NOEL KING, HOST:
Patricia Edwards of Greenville, S.C., is one of more than 202,000 Americans who have died from COVID-19. She worked as a nurse for many years. Her daughter Sherie Gamble says her co-workers called her Bubbles.
SHERIE GAMBLE: She believed in washing her patients the old-school way. She gave them a sponge bath with the basin. She didn't use the wipes that they do now. She actually gave them a bath with soap (laughter). So they said that the bed would be filled with soap and bubbles, you know, like, you're getting a real wash. And I can attest to that because she did me that way when I fell sick in the ICU.
KING: Another daughter, Emily Holloway, recalls how when she got breast cancer, her mom would drive a hundred miles to North Carolina to take care of her.
EMILY HOLLOWAY: She was not only a nurse to the community, but she was our nurse. So when I found out that I had breast cancer, I had to do chemo and radiation. And Mom made that trip for me every week to be with me while I get my treatments. And she stayed with me for about three to four days to make sure her grandkids was fed and that we had food for the week - to make sure that we were taken care of.
KING: When Patricia Edwards got COVID-19, she ended up in the ICU where she worked, at St. Francis Downtown hospital. Her daughter Valerie Edwards (ph) says her mother's colleagues became her caretakers.
VALERIE EDWARDS: I was at the hospital while she was there towards the end. And it was one day, the outside of her room was just filled with so many people from that hospital and from other hospitals, the people that she worked with who just came to see her and pray for her and just to let us know that she meant so much to them.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Patricia Edwards was 62 when she died in August from COVID-19. She is survived by five children, who have set up a nursing scholarship in her memory. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.