An ICU nurse and her mother have gone viral since a touching photo of the pair embracing each other was shared online. In a moment of spontaneity, the mother threw a bedsheet over her daughter’s head and pulled her close for a reassuring hug.
Kelsey Kerr, 28, is an ICU nurse at Christ Hospital in Cincinnati, Ohio. Both of her parents are in their mid-sixties with underlying health conditions, meaning that close contact during the global CCP virus pandemic could be risky. The two have been practicing social distancing with their daughter for a month now.
According to ABC News, on April 3, 2020, Kerr drove 15 minutes from her home to her parents’ place in Blue Ash to pick up prayer shawls for critically ill patients at the ICU. Sixty-four-year-old Cheryl Norton, desperate to hug her daughter, came up with a novel way to facilitate the gesture.
As reported by the Cincinnati Enquirer, Norton noticed a clean bed sheet in her laundry basket and spontaneously threw it over her daughter’s head, then proceeded to wrap her in a tight embrace. It was their family friend, Liz Dufour of the Cincinnati Enquirer, who was walking in the neighborhood who captured the now-viral photo of the sweet moment from a safe distance.
“I did it for me. But that was kind of selfish,” Norton later admitted. “I did it for her, also, because I didn’t want her to feel like she was contaminated.”
Speaking to ABC’s Good Morning America, Norton added, “I see on social media that all these healthcare workers are feeling very isolated and I didn’t want that to happen to her.”
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Kerr had been working four 12-hour shifts per week in preparation for a potential surge in cases of CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, commonly known as the novel coronavirus. The overworked nurse, who had not yet been in contact with any infected patients and was wearing a mask at the time of the picture, described the hug as “so nice,” adding that she and her mother had “always been big huggers.”
“For a single second, everybody else was gone and I was just hugging my daughter,” Norton told CNN. “It was like she was safe for that one minute and I could take it all away from her.”
Hospital personnel display a thank you card after U.S. business mogul Michael "Big Mike" Straumietis donated masks to the Providence Saint Joseph Medical Center in Burbank, California, on April 7, 2020 FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP via Getty Images
Norton further shared that after hugging her daughter with a sheet that she had picked from a basket of clean clothes, she washed her hands thoroughly and placed the sheet in her garage for a few days before washing it, as a safety measure.
“The thing that was interesting about the photograph is you could see how tight [Kelsey] was holding me,” Norton reflected, speaking to Cincinnati Enquirer. “It was like she was home again. She was safe in my arms.”
“For that moment,” the loving mother continued, “for that split second, she was safe.”
Nurses clean their hands at a drive-up clinic set up by the University of Washington Medical Center's Northwest Outpatient Medical Center in Seattle, Washington, on March 17, 2020 Karen Ducey/Getty Images
Kerr, who shared that there has been so much difficulty right now and who has been quarantining with her husband and dog at home, believes that “[W]e’re going to make it through it and we’re all going to be together in the end.”
She further added: “It’s just a matter of getting there.”
Louise Chambers
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Louise Chambers is a writer, born and raised in London, England. She covers inspiring news and human interest stories.
