Adapting: Coronavirus restrictions keeping beloved Excela volunteer from his rounds

Editor’s note: Adapting is a regular series spotlighting the ways the coronavirus pandemic is changing the everyday lives of people in Western Pennsylvania.

“Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone?”

The line to Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi” resonates these days with nurses in the emergency department at Excela Health Westmoreland Hospital, who are without their volunteer helpers until the coronavirus stay-at-home order ends.

“The role of the volunteer may go unnoticed, but they are such an important resource to the patients and staff members,” said Morgan Shields, 27, a registered nurse from Acme. “You can’t truly appreciate it until you are without them.”

Shields particularly misses one volunteer with whom she’s developed a special friendship — Vic Bryer of Hempfield.

“We truly miss Vic during this time,” she said. “You could be having the worst day, and he’ll give you a hug. He’s just the nicest, most genuine person.”

Bryer, 77, has worked hard to make himself nearly indispensable in his five years at the Greensburg hospital.

His tasks include supplying pillows and warm blankets, making sure EMTs have a supply of stroke kits and generally helping nurses with whatever he can.

“About 99% of what I do is talk to the patients and guests,” he said. “I strike up a conversation, hold a hand, offer a little bit of comfort. Some people don’t have anyone there with them.”

Turning the tables

But now that volunteers have been told to stay home until mandated shutdowns are over, Shields and other ER nurses are turning the tables on Bryer by offering him a little care and concern.

“Some of us will text him once a week to check in,” Shields said. “The ER is like a family, and Vic is like an adopted grandpa to me.”

“I have 13 grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and those nurses are about my granddaughters’ age, so I can relate to them,” Bryer said. “We have good relationships, and I really miss them. They text and say, ‘Vic, you OK? You need anything?’

“I had to fight them and say, ‘No, no, no,’ ” he said. “Finally, Morgan said she’s going to bring me something, enough for two meals. She lives all the way down in Acme, so that was a big deal.”

Shields met Bryer in his driveway and passed off a feast of roast beef, mashed potatoes, cole slaw and peanut butter pie (“We stayed 6 feet apart”).

“That roast beef just melted in your mouth,” Bryer said. “I divided it in two, but the pie didn’t make it to two meals.”

“I can’t take credit for it. My mom cooked it,” Shields said. “I just delivered it.”

The food was a thank you from Susan Shields, also of Acme and a patient information coordinator in Excela’s OB/GYN department.

“My mom was in the ER a couple of months back, and Vic was just so wonderful to her,” Shields said.

Bryer said four other nurses also have offered meals, “but I successfully held them off.” Maybe he’ll relent, though, if they keep it up.

Never gets boring

Retired from a career in civil engineering, Bryer said he cared for his wife, Mary Lou, before she died from cancer.

“I took care of her, and I kind of got used to it,” he said. “She was my only girlfriend.”

The pair met in high school when they were 15, and she waited for him while he served in the Navy. When he came home, they married and spent 49 years as husband and wife.

Following Mary Lou’s death, Bryer volunteered for three years at UPMC East in Monroeville before moving to Westmoreland Hospital.

He said he thrives on the fast pace of the emergency department.

“It’s something different there every day. It never gets boring, and I wouldn’t have it any other way,” he said.

“Vic is incredibly committed to the patients and their families that come through the ED. He wants to ease their anxiety and make them feel comfortable. He extends that caring to the staff,” said Helen Burns, Excela chief nursing officer.

While the hiatus lasts, Bryer is keeping busy with yard work and preparing the garden where he grows tomatoes and cucumbers, which he pickles and shares with his Excela cohorts.

“I keep pestering the head nurse — ‘When can I come back?’ ” he said. “I’ll be back as soon as I can, and I’ll be getting a lot of hugs.”

He’ll save a special one for Shields.

“She’s a smart girl, very down-to-earth,” he said. “I always say I wish she was one of my granddaughters.”