Medical staff in Wuhan, the epicenter of the new pneumonia outbreak, have been working around the clock under high stress and risk of getting infected amid the growing number of the confirmed cases.

A nurse at the city’s Zhongnan Hospital returned to work, after recovering from the same illness that affects so many patients.

Thirty-eight-year-old Guo Qin was infected with the coronavirus earlier this month. After almost 20 days of treatment in quarantine, the first thing she did was returning to work.

“We are short of hands. My colleagues have been working around the clock. It has been a difficult time. They have families and children too and I feel them. So I told my superiors that I wanted to come back immediately after recovery,” said Guo.

Guo made her decision while she was still lying in a hospital bed. “It was my second day in the hospital. I couldn’t sleep. I heard my apprentice, a young man in his 20’s, working the whole night without me. It was a tough night for him,” the nurse recalled, adding,

“The alarms, his footsteps, they all reminded me of my duty.”

Her fever stopped after a few days. Then Guo was discharged to recover at home for two weeks. After thorough examinations, she finally came back to her post. It was a pleasant surprise for her colleagues.

“Medical personnel on the frontline are short-handed. So her return will help. But we still need to assess her physical condition since the job requires working in the isolation ward and wearing a protective suit for hours,” said Xia Jian, deputy director of the hospital’s emergency center.

There are about 80 medical workers in the emergency center. During a national outbreak like this, every effort counts. The sight of Guo helps shed some light in these darkest times.