Cheryl Norton hugs her daughter, Kelsey Kerr, 28, an ICU nurse at Christ Hospital. |
Norton's
daughter, Kelsey Kerr, is an ICU nurse at Christ Hospital in Ohio.
Although Kerr hasn't had to interact with any coronavirus patients yet,
she is still afraid of an uncertain future.
Like
most mothers of health care workers whose children are on the
frontlines of the dangerous battle against the pandemic, Norton felt
like she had no way of helping her daughter. That was until a quick,
spur of a moment decision led her to cover Kerr in a bed sheet and give
her a big hug.
"For a single
second, everybody else was gone and I was just hugging my daughter,"
Norton told CNN. "It was like she was safe for that one minute and I
could take it all away from her."
Cheryl Norton (left) and her daughter, Kelsey Kerr (right). |
Kerr had been visiting her mom to pick
up prayer shawls to give to her patients at the ICU as a way to ease the
pain of being at the hospital alone due to the hospital's visitor
restrictions.
Right
before her daughter left, Norton saw a basket of clean clothes and said
she "didn't even think about it" before grabbing a sheet and throwing
it over her daughter's head.
While
the two were closer than the recommended six feet of distance, Kerr had
not been in contact with any Covid-19 patients and was wearing a mask
under the bed sheet. She and her husband, along with their dogs, have
been self-isolating at their home just 15 minutes away from Norton.
"It's
been so hard to be away from her and not even be able to touch her or
give her a hug," Kerr said. "Everything's just been so difficult but she
made me feel so much better. It was a moment of normalcy. We both
really needed that."
The hug was more than just a way to tell
her daughter that was she was still there for her. It was a way to show
her they would be in it together -- all the way until the end.
"As
a parent, you know you'd take a bullet for your kid," Norton said. "I
don't want her to face what she's facing, but that's what she was built
for. I'm so proud of her and all the health care workers out there. I
wish I could give them all a hug."
A mom of an ICU nurse covered her daughter with a bed sheet to give her a hug
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