CRANSTON, R.I. (AP) — Nicholas DiPompo was finally going home.
Clutching his cane, the 78-year-old former property manager, who had spent weeks battling COVID-19 in a Rhode Island field hospital, eased into a wheelchair and hollered across the hall.
“You got my number,” DiPompo shouted to fellow patient Art Singleton, whom he’d grown close to after three weeks together. “Give me a call when you get out.” He said they’d go to his favorite restaurant for baked stuffed lobster.
Singleton, 56, sat in his wheelchair and watched as a nurse pushed his friend down the makeshift hallway. Another nurse pulled DiPompo’s oxygen tank behind him, past a long row of blue curtains, a bed behind each one.
“We were at the bottom,” DiPompo said of his friendship with Singleton, a pizzeria employee who had lost part of a leg to diabetes. “He had no feet, I had heart disease.”