NARRATIVE NONFICTION
The ICU: Covid 19
A memoir from the other side of the glass.
“Those who escape hell … never talk about it.”
— Charles Bukowski, epigraph
14
Years at the Bedside
5
Hospital Units
21
Chapters
18
Months That Changed Him
About the Book
Not a story about a virus.
A story about the people who stayed in the room.
James is an ICU nurse thirteen years into a career that trained him for almost anything — and nothing prepared him for this. The ICU: COVID 19 moves between the polished floors of a hospital at 6 a.m. and the private, unfiltered voice of a nurse trying to hold onto himself while the ground keeps moving.
Told with the dark humor, exhaustion, and tenderness that only someone who was actually there could write, this is narrative nonfiction from Douglas Benzel, RN — fourteen years at the bedside, the last several of them spent watching colleagues become family, patients become numbers, and numbers become unbearable.
This isn’t a headline. It’s the elevator ride up to the second floor, the same doors, the same silver sheen, as the carts that go back down.
First Light
Chapter One
The alarm cleaves the dark room in half — night from morning, sleep from awake. James rolls out of bed on feet that have spent thirteen years absorbing twelve-hour shifts on hospital tile, feet that have slowed, and swollen, and begun to complain about the fight before it’s even begun.
By the time the elevator doors close behind him, he’s already thinking about how much they look like the doors on the cart that hauls the bodies back down.
The Author
Douglas Benzel, RN
Douglas has spent the last fourteen years as a registered nurse across Nebraska and Colorado — starting on a Medical/Oncology floor, then into Cardiac Progressive Care and Intensive Care, through the Emergency Department and a Burn Unit. He currently works in the ICU at UC Health Greeley Hospital.
Before nursing, he taught Spanish and English at the college level for thirteen years. In his mid-30s, he went back to school for a BSN and changed careers entirely. He wrote a creative thesis instead of a traditional one for his master’s in English — a decision that led his department to keep the option open for future students.
The ICU: COVID 19 is his first work of narrative nonfiction. Douglas has two daughters and spends his time off camping and hiking in the Rockies.
Degrees : MAEd & BA, Spanish · UNK
Degrees : MA English & BSN · UNC
Career : 13 Yrs Teaching → 14 Yrs Nursing
Based In : Greeley, Colorado
Fourteen years at the bedside.
One story he finally told.
Available in paperback and eBook. Pick it up wherever you read.