If you walk into the main lobby of Mercy Springfield, pass by the main elevators and glance up to the left, you'll see 711 yellow hearts secured to windows. A serene garden rests beyond the glass.
The hearts are part of a temporary memorial honoring the patients who died of Covid-19 at Mercy Springfield or one of the healthcare system's hospitals in a nearby town.
Craig McCoy, president of Mercy Springfield Hospitals, said each represents a life lost to the illness—"each one of those a son, a daughter or friend, a coworker, mother, father."
McCoy said at a dedication ceremony he hopes those who died of Covid-19 at Mercy felt dignity in their last days because of the healthcare team members who were with them.
A Mercy chaplain, Dani Helm, reminded those who attended the memorial dedication that each of the patients had a name and a story.
She recalled standing with a family outside a hospital room as they looked through a glass door at their loved one who was dying of Covid-19. As Helm consoled the family in their grief, two healthcare workers dressed in PPE held the patient's hands and put a phone up to her ear so she could hear loved ones' voices in her final moments.
"She was a grandma. She was a mom, and she loved to bake cookies," Helm said of the patient. "Her love in life was to bake cookies for other people, and, in the community where she had lived her whole life, she was known as 'The Cookie Lady.'"
Erik Frederick, chief administrative officer at Mercy Springfield, recalled watching as employees placed the yellow hearts on the windows. He said he realized that each heart was a person they were lifting up.
"And not only were they lifting that up and that sacred duty they had to represent that patient and that family in that moment, but I was also struck by all the people that hands were there lifting that heart with them—our doctors and nurses, our respiratory therapists, our housekeepers. Everyone who was engaged on our Covid unit just doing that work over the last couple of years," said Frederick.
Wanda Brown worked on the Covid unit at Mercy from the time it opened. She said at the start of the pandemic they didn't know what to expect, and it's been a difficult journey since.
"Our coworkers have seen surge after surge," she said. "And when it felt like they couldn't get it all done, they carried on."
The memorial is temporary; it was created by a coworker recognition committee at Mercy, which is normally tasked with scheduling fun events, so this was a different direction for its members.
The committee is currently working on a permanent memorial for those who died of COVID-19 at Mercy.