Fear, dread, and anxiety have become maternity ward nurse Samantha Brown’s closest friends as she navigates working at the popular Cornwall Regional Hospital during COVID-19.

Opening up in a no-holds-barred interview with The Gleaner on Wednesday, Brown said that her fears were heightened recently by two pregnant women who left St Catherine in the middle of the increase in the workplace cluster cases and the lockdown of the parish.

Looking back, Brown said that if the women had coronavirus, the porter and the security guard who transported them to the labour unit would have caught it, as well as the nurses.

Brown, like many of her colleagues, has stopped wearing her nurse’s uniform because of the stigma attached to the job.

Six years now on the job, Brown says that nurses in the profession who have been around for over 40 years say they have never experienced anything like this.