Death, grief and comfort at Everett’s pandemic epicenter

EVERETT — Sunlight pours into the cancer unit on the third floor of Providence hospital, and April Mitchell steps aside for nurses wheeling a sleeping patient down the halls.

Then she carts her hefty lever harp into the elevator.

Mitchell, a therapeutic musician, plays for people who are sick or dying. A growing body of evidence suggests it can improve patients’ pain, stress, memory, immune system and more, according to the American Psychological Association.

Mitchell was trained to not talk and let the harp do the work.

“I don’t 100% follow that training,” she told The Daily Herald with a smile. “I think sometimes people need to talk.”

Mitchell rolls her instrument into a hospital room. Shelly Holmgren beams. A rendition of “Silent Night” echoes through the halls. Holmgren calls it “absolute magic.”

For some patients, the harpist is the only person coming to their room, giving them a break from thinking about their illness and the place they are stuck in.

As the coronavirus pandemic marches into its third year, hospitals are as strained as ever. The omicron variant has pushed infections to record highs. Non-emergency surgeries have been paused statewide. With few exceptions, visitors aren’t allowed. The Washington National Guard was on its way to help at Providence Regional Medical Center Everett and other hospitals in the state.

Holmgren has been in the hospital with multiple myeloma, a type of blood cancer, since November. Her 63rd birthday came and went last month as she sat there in her blue gown.

“My bones were like chalk,” Holmgren said. “They were just cracking.”

People told her it was a bad time to get sick. She didn’t like to hear that, but she agreed. It’s been a bad time to get sick for a long time now.

On Jan. 21, 2020, health officials announced the first patient in the United States with a new kind of coronavirus was being treated at this very hospital in Everett.

Two years later, people like Holmgren still suffer from indirect consequences of the pandemic. She hasn’t been able to see much of her family.

A week before Christmas, her brother got a visitor pass. They held hands. He told her to fight.

“I don’t sink into a black hole,” Holmgren said. “That’d be so easy.”

Instead, she finds happier things to talk about, like her time on “Radical Sabbatical,” an old reality TV show about people quitting day jobs and following their dreams. Holmgren opened La Conner’s Queen of the Valley bed and breakfast in front of those TV cameras. She talks about her favorite band, The Four Bitchin’ Babes, and their love song to bald men. She played it for many bald guests.

One time she got the babes to play a show and sleep at her inn.

“It was the best day of my life,” she said.

Holmgren laughs and grins. She also cries.

As promised, Mitchell learned to play a lullaby Holmgren used to sing to her children. Wearing goggles and a mask, the harpist’s nimble fingers glided down the instrument.

Then a holiday tune, “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” elicits tears. Mitchell’s voice doesn’t quaver on the line: “Next year all your troubles will be miles away.”

“No song has ever affected me like this,” Holmgren said. “I don’t know if I’ll have a next year. But this song gives me hope that I will.”

Weeks later, she’s still at the hospital. Her chemotherapy appears to be working, she said.

Providence Regional Medical Center juts out of a quiet neighborhood in north Everett.

Early on in the pandemic, neighbors would cheer and make noise each night to honor health care workers and first responders. Those little traditions have since fizzled out. But hospital staff are still bearing the weight of the pandemic, amid dwindling ranks and rampant burnout.

Mitchell plays three days a week. She’s part of a spiritual care team, along with Chaplain Josh Wilson, who visits dying patients, often praying with them or promising to deliver a final message to family.

The spiritual work, Wilson said, is especially important when patients feel so alone.

“Isolation,” he said, “is painful for the human soul, the human spirit.”

‘I don’t know if I want to do this anymore’

Even on busy days, Brooke Desjardins can find some time to braid patients’ hair.

“I’m an awful braider,” she said. “But you know, girls with long hair, they love their hair braided. So I try.”

The certified nursing assistant still lives with her parents in Stanwood. When the pandemic hit, she was 19. She immediately started working in the COVID ward. She was scared of bringing the virus home to her family.

These days, she picks up extra shifts to save up for her next quarter at Everett Community College, where she’s on the pre-nursing track.

Each day, she leaves the house 30 minutes early, listening to Drake or Post Malone in the car, mentally preparing for her shift. Schoolwork occupies her morning. She gets done at the hospital at 11 p.m.

It’s a job she has considered leaving. Plenty of co-workers already have in what has been called the “great resignation,” or the Big Quit.