COVID took many in the prime of life, leaving families to pick up the pieces

Christina Summers, 37, holds three of her children, 8-year-old twins Elijah and Emmani, and her 6-year-old daughter, Madison. Summers' husband, James Summers, died last October from COVID. She is now raising their nine children on her own. (Rosem Morton for NPR)

Around 3 a.m. on a Sunday morning last October, Christina Summers got a phone call she'll never forget. It was a doctor at the Baltimore hospital where her husband, James, had been admitted a week earlier for COVID-19. He'd been struggling to breathe. Now, they were calling to tell her James was being put on a ventilator.