As my father was dying in ICU this past weekend, the hospital said only two visitors would be allowed due to Covid restrictions. But since they admitted my mother, sister and I into the main hospital entrance after the temperature and mask station, we decided to just try and walk into the ICU after my sister had them buzz us in.
Either I looked scary, or nobody had the guts to turn away a third family member at a dying/last visit. We did hear one of the staff whisper "But there's THREE of them!" but nobody did anything. The Charge nurse on duty said she was five months from retirement, wasn't afraid of any repercussions, and kind of hinted we should try that. My sister works in that hospital as a Labor and Delivery OBGYN nurse, and she'd exhausted all the favors and exceptions she could try and get through official and unofficial channels.
The Friday evening before, in the ER, they decided to let my mother, sister, myself, and my wife in, which was also a (pleasant) shock. But I think they knew the severity of his head injury, and while not directly telling us his prognosis was already grim, they wanted us to be with him. And they needed us as it would turn out. We helped hold him down and kept talking to him with the 3 seconds of memory he had, as he was "head injury combative" and kept trying to get out of the hospital bed, remove all his medical sensors, and it took all of us to hold him until they pushed Ativan on him twice.
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