Nearly every patient was on a ventilator. Some were in their 80s, some in their 30s. Medical workers were falling fast and had to be resourceful — “the alternative,” one said, “is death.”

The night had been particularly tough. Patient after patient had to be intubated and put on a ventilator to breathe. At one point, three “codes” — emergency interventions when someone is on the brink of death — occurred at once.

Dr. Joshua Rosenberg, a critical care doctor, arrived the next morning at the Brooklyn Hospital Center.

Within hours, he was racing down the stairwell from the main intensive care unit on the sixth floor to a temporary one on the third, where he passed one of his favorite medical students.

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