I would not normally write about one of my wife's co-workers.
That would tend to be a conflict of interest.
But things aren't exactly normal, are they?
So, I'm breaking the rules to tell you about Breanne Griffin, and about what it's like when your family is full of health care heroes like her during a global pandemic.
I'm making one request, too.
We don't know when sports events in front of crowds will return, but I know what should happen when they do.
When the crowds come back, we should send our nurses and doctors and first responders out to the Busch Stadium baselines and let cheers rain down upon them.
We should welcome them onto the Enterprise Center ice, invite them onto Faurot Field with a Marching Mizzou accompaniment, parade them around World Wide Technology Raceway before the green flag.
Let's use sports to thank our health care heroes. Again and again and again.
We should dedicate games to doctors who are fighting coronavirus in rural exam rooms and overwhelmed nursing homes.
We should dedicate games to nurses who are pinning pictures of their faces to their gowns so scared patients know there's a smile behind that N95 mask.
We should dedicate games to paramedics who every day rush toward situations the rest of us pray to avoid.
We should dedicate a game to Breanne Griffin.
"I've been a nurse for 16 years," said the network nurse manager for emergency services at St. Luke's Hospital. "It is ingrained in you to care for people, to save people, or if it's the end of someone's life, to be there for them."
I heard about Griffin's heroics from my wife, Cassandra, who works in the St. Luke's marketing department.
I would not normally write about one of my wife's co-workers.
I would not normally write about my own family.
But things aren't exactly normal, and it doesn't feel right to always stick to sports when so many of my loved ones are up there with Griffin on the front lines of this fight.
My dad, a doctor, recently sent me a photo of himself in a mask and face shield. I was both proud and terrified. I could tell he was smiling.
My mother-in-law, a nurse, didn't think twice about accepting shifts in the intensive care unit.
My father-in-law, a doctor, and his wife, a nurse practitioner, report to work at the same emergency room.
Both of my brothers-in-law have sisters who are nurses. One has tested positive for coronavirus.
I tell them they are amazing. They say they are just doing their jobs.
I have talked to these family members enough to realize there are things those of us on the outside looking in cannot know.
Most of us can't really understand the joy of helping someone beat this thing. Most of us can't really comprehend the pain of the alternative.
We see numbers _ more than 700,000 cases and 34,000 deaths in the U.S. _ and lines on graphs.
They see faces, families.
Every day, they encounter moments that threaten to break them, followed by moments that remind them why they would never do anything else, and then they go back to work the next day and do it all over again.
Griffin is in charge of scheduling and supporting a group of 100-plus nurses across two emergency rooms. She makes sure the nurses under her supervision are doing everything possible to protect themselves while protecting others. She sometimes has to be the conduit between sick patients and panicked families who must keep their distance due to the contagiousness of the virus. She has been working 13-hour days while missing her four daughters, but she can't always see them when she's off, because she wants to minimize the chances of exposing them to the virus. Grandma has been helping out a lot. It's hard.
"They don't understand," Griffin said. "They don't want me to get sick."
Anyone with a loved one on the inside can relate. Selfishly, we wish they would just stay home. And yet we know they won't.
Griffin can share highs that make your hair stand on end, like the joy of watching a reunion between a wife who spent nights on a ventilator and a husband who spent nights waiting by a phone, hoping he had not hugged his love for the last time.
She can share lows that make you cry the tears she does not have time for, because another life is on the line.
When asked what keeps her going, Griffin shared a story.
A young nurse Griffin works with reported for a shift on Easter Sunday. She was assigned to help look after an elderly woman who was losing her fight with coronavirus. The patient's family members made the decision to stop the use of a ventilator and maximize comfort, but they were not going to be able to travel from out of state in time to say goodbye in person. So, the young nurse stayed in the room to hold a hand until the end. The young nurse returned for her next shift, and the next. It's what they do.
"We are not saving everyone," Griffin said. "But we are there when they need us."
Griffin and her teammates have started celebrating when a patient beats coronavirus, lining the hospital halls to cheer triumphant exits.
Let's borrow that idea for when sports can draw crowds again.
Let's stand and let our health care heroes hear our gratitude.
Again and again and again.
