LOS ANGELES — A man with painfully swollen legs from congestive heart failure lies on a gurney outside the emergency room, looking up at a leaden sky that is threatening rain. A wife helps her husband into a triage tent, after his dialysis center refused to admit him after a positive coronavirus test.
Arriving at the emergency department of Martin Luther King Jr. Community Hospital, people are treated in field tents, hallways, cubicles, former administrative offices and ambulance bays. Many wait in the open air with coughs and sore throats to get tested for the coronavirus. Others come for all sorts of chronic diseases that perpetually curse South Los Angeles.
A year ago, MLK was arguably ground zero for hospitals besieged by a brutal COVID-19 winter surge.
