Everybody Just Breathe: A COVID Nurse Memoir of Stamina and Swear Words

Jack, in my head I am considering you already dead. Is that wrong? I think it is a coping mechanism. You are just a body now, albeit one that I watch very closely. There are so many of you that we pour our hearts into, just to end up like this. So, I can't think of you as a person right now. I am sorry about that. That is my confession. I am too busy trying to save you.

Amanda Peterson is an ICU nurse, graduate student, and mother of two. She's also one of America's frontline workers in the fight against COVID-19.

For nearly a year, Amanda worked in COVID ICU. Every patient every day was admitted with the same diagnosis. The beds filled up, but the mainstays of hospital life--frantic call lights, trays of half-eaten meals, and questions from worried families--disappeared as patient after patient began their own agonizing fight for breath.

Everybody Just Breathe is a harrowing, generous, and often irreverent memoir chronicling the longest shift of one nurse's life. This startling debut is a testament to patients and a love letter of camaraderie to fellow COVID nurses. It is also an uproarious depiction of motherhood locked down. Amanda Peterson is a crucial new voice with a timely plea to a nation fatigued by pandemic: Everybody Just Breathe.