Michelle Delgado remembers Feb. 19 — the day she drove her dad to Community Regional Medical Center’s emergency department sick with COVID-19. It was the day before his 56th wedding anniversary. That made it even harder for the family to see him whisked away for treatment. The pandemic meant no visitors were allowed for safety reasons.

Watching him disappear into the hospital, the Merced teacher couldn’t help but wish she was with him — never thinking that just nine days later she would be.

“I never saw this coming,” Delgado says of how sick she also got from COVID-19.

“I’ll be fine, I’ll be fine,” is what she told herself when she first came down with symptoms after dropping off her dad. “But then my oxygen levels were so low I told my son to get me down there. It was kind of surreal having to walk the same steps my dad did,” she says.

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