1 week Ago By Sandra G Boodman
Shemika Rodriguez was frustrated and getting nowhere. An employee of a bicycle-based food-delivery service in New York City , Rodriguez had gone to two clinics near her Brooklyn apartment seeking help for a persistent runny nose . The treatments prescribed – first for an allergy and later a virus – hadn’t helped.
After three months, the episodic drip had turned into a constant, distressing flow. So in August 2023, when Rodriguez found herself in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village making an afternoon delivery a block from a hospital, she decided she had nothing to lose by slipping into the emergency room. Maybe, she thought, someone there could tell her why she wasn’t getting better.
“I walked in, and it was empty,” Rodriguez recalled, hoping that the temporary absence of patients was a good omen..
