Page 6 - My FlipBook 1

2 0 L I V E S , I’M NOT SCARED of anything. I’m WE WATCH TV, we talk a lot, she
THE CUSTODIAN
2 0 P E R S P E C T I V E S brave. It takes a lot of courage to do cooks for me. She’ll be like, How’s it
EUGENIO MESA
things that you’re not normally doing. going? Is everything okay? I tell her
ENVIRONMENTAL-SERVICES everything is fine, everything is cool,
W H A T WORKER, NEWYORK- WHILE THE PATIENT is there in everything is good. She cooks my
PRESBYTERIAN MORGAN STANLEY
the room, we try to move as quietly
CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL as we can. We’re not trying to wake meal every day, so I’m very happy.
New York City
W E ’ R E them up, because they’re trying to I FEEL GOOD. Not just because they
I’M FROM THE neighborhood, so recover. They’re not trying to hear require me to do what I have to do.
I live about two minutes from the anything they don’t want to hear. I’m doing this out of love. I want to
LEARNING work site. I’d been applying to this IT’S SAD. Just working in the hospi- see everything go back to normal. I
hospital for years. I went to the tal normally is sad. want to be able to contribute to it.
interview—it was on my birthday. I WAS BORN in the Dominican I MISS SPORTS. I’m a baseball player.
I got my job. Republic. I came here when I was ONE DAY I could be able to tell my
WE WERE CALLED into the office about eight years old, in 2000. This kids like, Yeah, I was in this. I was
by our supervisor. It was a Saturday August is gonna be my twentieth helping out, making sure that these
F R O M T H E morning. They call me by my last year in the United States. I already rooms were clean and that [doctors
name. “Hey, Mesa, can I speak to have twenty years here. and nurses] had a clean environment
V I R U S T H A T you?” In my mind I’m thinking, Am I WOULD NOT like to see somebody so they could work. And I could con-
I in trouble? She was like, “I’m not else get sick just because I’m in sider myself part of the team.
C H A N G E D sure how comfortable you feel about the middle of this. That’s just my IF SOMEBODY’S GOING through a
going inside each room with biggest fear. I take care of myself tough time, I want to put a smile on
E V E R Y T H I N G COVID-19. Can you go in if I asked before I’m able to interact with oth- your face. I’m that person that you
you to?” And I said, “Of course.” I ers at home, because I live with my can count on. —As told to Brady
didn’t hesitate. mom and my brother. Langmann
Turn to page 54 for the
other nineteen perspec-
tives that constitute “What
We’re Learning,” a collec-
tion of first-person accounts
of humanity’s stand
against the coronavirus.

Mesa was photographed as part of a portfolio on the frontline workers of the NewYork-Presbyterian hospital network, taken at the height of the COVID-19 outbreak in New York.
Seventeen people participated in the project; their portraits, by Benedict Evans, ran across several Hearst magazines.

4 PHOTOGRAPHS BY BENEDICT EVANS