SEATTLE—For 10 days last month, they lay in side-by-side isolation units in a Seattle-area hospital, tethered to oxygen and struggling to breathe as the coronavirus ravaged their lungs.
After nearly 52 years of marriage, that was the hardest thing: being apart in this moment, too weak to care for each other, each alone with their anxiety and anguish.
“I worried about my husband a lot,” recalled Josie Taylor, 74, who fell ill a few days before George, 76. “Yes, I was concerned about me, but I was more concerned about what was going to happen to him.”
Despite their personal uncertainty, when a doctor approached the Taylors at their bedsides to ask if they would consent to join a study of an experimental drug to help experts learn to treat the devastating infection, each agreed.
“My answer was absolutely yes,” Josie said. “My feeling was anything I can do to help. Even if you’re stuck in an isolation room, this is affecting so many people and we have to do everything we can.”
In late March, the Taylors were discharged from EvergreenHealth medical center, heading home a few days apart. They returned to their tidy white house in Everett, tired,…
