There seems to be a rift growing on the board as to the reality or not on the virus. It's real folks, this is not a Sandy Hook conspiracy case.
Oakland pitcher makes promise after dad's stunning coronavirus death: I will get drafted
Harvey Puckett, left, with his son Nino and wife Sherry. Harvey died of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.
Harvey Puckett was dying alone.
Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.
He was hooked to a ventilator in Room 13 in the intensive care unit at Ascension St. John Hospital in Detroit. A small device was clipped to the pointer finger of his right hand, measuring his blood-oxygen level. He had a fever and was heavily sedated.
Sherry Puckett, his wife of 23 years, was unable to visit Harvey because he was suspected of having COVID-19, the disease caused by
the novel coronavirus. Social distancing is the cruelest aspect of this pandemic — victims are left alone in hospital rooms, while family and friends are kept away, unable to comfort them.
But then, a nurse appeared in the room, like a modern-day angel.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.
The nurse wore blue rubber gloves and slid her fingers into the curve of Harvey's bare hand.
“Your wife wants you to know that she loves you,” the nurse told Harvey, 52, of Sterling Heights.
The nurse hoped her words would slip through the sedation and spark his memory.
Maybe, Harvey would start to remember how things used to be before the virus.
How Sherry used to sit in the stands as Harvey coached baseball and pitched batting practice and shagged fly balls in the outfield and kept the scorebook and caught his son’s bullpens. Harvey taught Nino, his son, how to throw and took him to tournaments and they traveled around the country together. The entire family. Tournaments became family vacations. Baseball was the center of their lives. And now, Nino is a 19-year-old pitcher at Oakland University, hoping to pitch in the MLB someday.
“Your wife is nearby,” the nurse said to Harvey, holding his hand.
Sherry was desperate, feeling helpless, worrying about her husband.
So she sat in her car in the parking lot at the hospital. She stared at the building where she once worked and counted the windows, trying to figure out what room he was in. She talked to Harvey and prayed for him and read Psalm 23 from her bible, trying to project her thoughts to him:
Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
Several friends came with her. Baseball friends. For years, Harvey helped coach the Motor City Hit Dogs, one of the best travel teams in the country. The parents of Nino's teammates became Harvey and Sherry's best friends. They parked their cars together — careful, to remain 6 feet apart — and they prayed and somebody held up a sign: "Hurry up Harvey. We love you!!! You've got this."
It sounded like baseball lingo —
you got this! Full of encouragement and hope.
Later, the nurse sent a text message to Sherry and told her what she did and the words she spoke and sent a picture of her hand holding Harvey's: "I will try my best to watch over him as best I can, just so maybe underneath all that sedation, he knows someone is there."
'An essential worker'
Harvey had no preconditions. He worked as a mortician at Fisher Funeral Home in Redford. Sherry believes that Harvey was infected with COVID-19 at his job, not from the deceased but somebody attending a funeral.
“He’s an essential worker,” Sherry said. “So he kept working.”
Harvey started to show symptoms on Friday, March 20.
"It's cold," he said, sitting with Sherry and Nino.
"No, it's not," Sherry said.
Sherry is a nurse educator for a pharmaceutical company and she took his temperature. It was 102 degrees and he stayed home from work for the next two days. “He’s never missed a day of work in the 23 years that we've been together,” Sherry said. “I mean, besides for baseball.”
His fever ranged from 100 to 102 on Monday, March 23, and Sherry called a doctor.
“The doctor said that sounds like Influenza A,” Sherry said. “He was having more like aches. No cough. No runny nose, stuff like that. They said to treat the symptoms, keep the fever down, make sure you stay hydrated, typical stuff.”
Harvey started making a strange sound — like a cough that couldn't quite come out, on Tuesday night, March 24.
“Are you having shortness of breath?” Sherry asked.
“No, I just don't want to cough cause it hurts,” he said.
He went to bed and woke up with a 102.7 fever.
“I called the doctor and explained that he was starting to make this funny choking sound, but he didn't look short of breath to me,” Sherry said.
In her experience as a nurse, Sherry thought her husband was presenting like a patient with COPD — chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, an inflammatory lung disease.
“They have these respiratory urgent care centers now set up, where you have to call for an appointment for what's going on, and I took him to urgent care," Sherry said.
His blood oxygen level was 68% but he was talking and coherent. He gave his name and date of birth.
“They called EMS,” Sherry said. “Within 20 minutes, EMS took him.”
Harvey was taken to St. John Hospital in Detroit, where Sherry used to work as a nurse.
Around 1 o’clock, he called her. “They are admitting me,” he said. “They're going to put me on a ventilator for this virus.”
“What do you mean?” she asked. “Do you have COVID?”
“They swabbed me,” he said. “They think it is but they don’t know.”
Before he hung up, Harvey said one last thing.
"He said, ‘I love you,' ” Sherry recalled. “’I love Nino. I’ll talk to you soon.’”
He hung up and was put on a ventilator.
“That was the last time I talked to him,” she said.
Five days later, he was dead.
'I love you Dad'
Nino turned to his baseball coaches for support, including Scott Leonard, one of the best youth coaches in the country. Leonard coached Puckett on the Hit Dogs before Nino was in high school, back when Harvey was an assistant coach.
"We've always stayed in contact," Leonard said. "Nino texted me that his dad was in the hospital."
The doctors suspected that Harvey had COVID-19. “They were treating him with the malaria drug because he was presenting like COVID,” Sherry said.
She called the hospital several times a day for updates. “They are fine with that because they're so busy,” she said. “Whenever I called, the nurses were always there, answering my questions and giving me updates.”
On his second day in the hospital, Harvey's fever spiked to 105 degrees.
Nino put a post on Instagram. "I love you Dad," Nino wrote. "You’re the strongest person I know and prayers continue to come your way. You will be fine in no time. I believe in you."
At a time when some people weren't taking the virus seriously, Nino offered an important warning to his friends on social media. "To the people who are hanging out with people and not social distancing and think COVID-19 is not serious, I am telling you it is serious," Nino pleaded. "And we need to listen to what everyone is saying about this and take it serious because you never know when it can be you or a loved one of yours who get this virus. I LOVE YOU DAD."
'We just prayed'
Sherry sat in the parking lot two times.
The first time, she went alone. “I tried to mentally talk to him and talk him through it," she said. “And pray.”
That night, his temperature went down.
So she returned the next day with several baseball friends.
"Our cars were pointed toward the hospital and we just prayed for him," said Todd Hyndman, of Macomb Township.
Hyndman's son, Ben, and Nino have played baseball together since they were 9, and they won a state championship together at Warren De La Salle.
"It seemed like he was turning the corner," Hyndman said. "I thought Harvey was going to be OK."
Harvey's condition had improved so much that he was being weaned off the ventilator. Nino texted his role models — his old coaches — full of hope.
"Nino texted me and told me hat he was going in the right direction," Leonard said.
No coming back
On Harvey's fifth day in the hospital, Sherry learned that his COVID-19 test came back positive. “Yes, yes,” she said. “It takes that long.”
A few hours later, his body started to shut down. “I got a call that his kidneys were starting to fail,” Sherry said. “They needed to put a central line in to start dialysis, which is part of the effect of the virus. It attacks multiple organs.”
An hour later, he started to have an irregular heartbeat.
“He went into cardiac arrest,” Sherry said. “With this virus, once that happens, they usually can’t come back.”
'They couldn't save him'
Sherry was summoned to the hospital. “I don't even remember driving to the hospital honestly,” she said. “I had to walk in through the main entrance and then you have to stand 6 feet from a cone and they ask your name: ‘Have you been in contact with anyone with the COVID virus? Do you have a fever? Do you have a cough or any symptoms?’
“And then they give you a white sheet of paper and then they send you to another little area and you are 6 feet from a reception desk. You can't get anywhere near them. They ask you why you're there? What is your name?”
They gave her a N-95 mask to put on.
“Everything is like locked down,” Sherry said. “So then I got a little badge and they took me up to intensive care unit. That’s when they told me that they couldn’t save him.”
Harvey had died.
It was March 30, just 10 days after Sherry noticed that he had a fever, just five days after Harvey entered the hospital and just one day after a nurse held his hand in the room and it seemed like he was coming out of it.
Sherry was taken to the room where he died.
“I couldn't go in his room because of the virus but I could see him,” Sherry said. “It was glass and I sat outside the door. The nurse came in to talk to me and the doctor came and talked to me and they gave me my alone time, outside the room. I was right by the nurse's station.”
Sherry met the nurse who had comforted her husband.
A nurse at Ascension St. John Hospital in Detroit holds the hand of Harvey Puckett, who died from complications of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.
"It was just amazing," Sherry said. "I had never met this nurse. I don't even know her name. She waited for me outside and said, 'I'm the one who held his hand. I just wanted to say I'm so sorry.'
"She hugged me forever. She is an angel."
Sherry looked at her husband through a window.
“It was just like he was sleeping,” she said. “It was very peaceful. Like he was just in a hospital bed sleeping.”
She never got to hold his hand.
She never got to kiss him goodbye.
Our new normal
Nino posted the news on Instagram.
“This one hurts so much but I will forever love you, Dad,” Nino wrote. “I still can’t wrap my head around this and I can’t believe this.”
It was a heartbreaking, 383-word post, revealing the horror these families are going through, unable to be with their loved ones.
“The fact that I haven’t seen you in 5 days and you’re gone is killing me!!!!” Nino wrote.
“You taught me how to play the game of baseball at such a young age and I strive to be as good as you were every day. Now, I am making a promise to you that I will get drafted and I am a man of my word. It will happen, dad. I promise. We both know how much this means to both of us.
"All the countless hours you spent with me at the facility after a long day of work got me to where I am today. Seeing you put on catchers gear to catch my bullpens showed how much you cared about me."
The news spread through the baseball community. In less than 24 hours, there were 800 reactions on Nino’s Instagram post, including 200 comments — many from former teammates, coaches and opposing players.
This our new normal, grieving on Instagram, trying to comfort through emojis, sending love through emails and texts.
“The baseball community has been absolutely amazing,” Sherry said. “Even people that Nino faced when he was 12. I mean, even from people in New York that he played against. That makes my heart happy.”
“What did baseball mean to your husband and Nino?” I asked.
As I asked it, tears formed in my eyes. I knew the answer. Because I’ve lived the same life with my sons. I've known Nino and Harvey for more than 10 years. We went to the same tournaments. My son faced Nino countless times. Travel baseball is a small world.
“It was their life,” Sherry said, becoming emotional. “I mean, the pride that Harvey had for Nino. It lit his life up. I have a picture of Nino at 2½ with the little ball in the backyard, and when he swung it in, I swear it went probably 40 feet. Oh my gosh, the pride, the joy, Harvey had for Nino.”
More: These are the heroes on the front lines of Michigan's coronavirus crisis
A community grieves
I got a text about Harvey on Monday night.
“Nino Puckett’s dad died,” Fred Kark wrote to me.
I was stunned.
My son Nick played for the Warriors Baseball Club of Michigan. And it seemed like every Sunday afternoon, we ended up playing the Hit Dogs for a tournament championship. If we were lucky, the Hit Dogs had already used up Nino — one of the best youth baseball players I ever saw. He could throw 78 mph when he was 12.
“You remember the battles we had with them?” Kark asked.
Kark’s son, Dylan, played with my son and then later joined the Hit Dogs. He is now a shortstop at Michigan State.
Darn near every kid who played in those games is now playing a college sport, from both teams.
A few minutes later, I got a text from Dave Veasley, another baseball dad I've known forever. “Be safe,” he wrote.
When you see the stats about this virus, when you hear about the deaths, it seems so abstract. But this was reality. Nobody is invincible. I started calling several baseball dads and coaches that I know, and it was like we were all grieving together.
No, it was more than grieving. It was venting our own fears about ourselves.
"I thought how devastated Sherry and Nino must be,” Jim Trahey said. His son, Reese, is now playing baseball at MSU. He played against Nino for years and then joined him as a teammate. “I thought about the last time I talked with Harvey at the field and how it could have been any one of us.”
I kept making calls. It felt like I was standing in the back of a funeral home, during visitation, and telling old stories.
“Harvey was the first guy to help out," Orchard Lake St. Mary's baseball coach Matt Petry said.
Petry coached against Nino for three years when he was at De La Salle. And he coached him for five seasons as his travel baseball coach.
"Harvey would come to practice and throw batting practice, shag balls in the outfield," Petry said. "I even had a nickname for him. We’d call each other Baby Girl."
"What?"
"It was something weird that popped up," Petry said and laughed.
"He was just a funny man," Leonard said. "He always found something to laugh about — just a good freakin' guy. He's this big jolly guy."
Any life is like a puzzle — things that make sense and fit together perfectly and others that don't. I am certain that Harvey was beloved in the baseball world, but he made mistakes outside of it. He was charged in 2012 in Macomb Township with larceny while working at a funeral home. He pleaded guilty, was put on probation and paid $6,939.50 in restitution.
That doesn't diminish the grief of his family or the insanity that they are living through. Sherry is not planning a funeral. Not with the 10-person limits.
“We can’t,” Sherry said. “Nino is a smart kid. He has grown to be a very mature 19-year-old and he said his dad would not want anyone crying over him. His dad would want his life celebrated. So because of everything that's going on, we're actually gonna have like a big celebration when all of this is over.”
Angels on Earth
Nino has had trouble sleeping. He sent a text message to Leonard at 5:58 a.m. on Thursday.
"I love you," Nino wrote.
Nino included a picture that brought back all kinds of memories. He was coming around the bases after hitting a home run and was slapping hands with Leonard while rounding third base. His dad was in the dugout.
"He was having a rough moment," Leonard said. "It's horrible."
Ten days after coming down with a fever, Harvey was gone.
Now, a wife is grieving by herself, unable to have a proper funeral. And a son is texting his former baseball coaches, trying to find comfort in old pictures.
I'm certain there are other nurses in other hospitals, across the country, holding the hands of dying patients, trying to comfort them, whispering in their ears. Trying to cut through the sedation and make them remember of how things used to be before the virus.
And these nurses are amazing people.
Angels on Earth.
Harvey Puckett's symptoms started with a fever. Ten days later, his coronavirus death stunned an entire baseball community in Michigan.
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