A New Surge at a Santa Monica I.C.U.

They thought the worst of the pandemic was behind them. Then a new wave of cases arrived at the I.C.U. at Providence Saint John’s Health Center.

SANTA MONICA, Calif. — Two months ago at Providence Saint John’s Health Center, Dr. Morris Grabie stood at a makeshift plastic wall in the intensive care unit and prayed. “Baruch atah Adonai, Eloheinu Melech ha’olam,” he began in Hebrew, the sterile divider behind him sealing off the patients with Covid-19 from the uninfected. “Blessed are you, Adonai our God, sovereign of all, who has kept us alive, sustained us and brought us to this season.” Around the physician at the hospital in Santa Monica, Calif., a small army in scrubs — doctors, nurses, technicians — bowed their heads, bearing witness to what seemed to be the beginning of the end of the pandemic. Sixty-nine lives on the ward had been claimed by the virus. Pain and grief, life and death, fear and loss — month after grinding month — all of it had unfolded behind that thin divider.