Ashley Edmonds

While away from the front lines, Ashley Edmonds lived the family life with her husband and two young sons. In non-pandemic times, she traveled, watched her sons play baseball and studied to become a nurse practitioner.

When on the front lines as a nurse in the intensive care unit at Ascension Genesys Hospital in Grand Blanc, the Coronavirus became much more than numbers on a page or a mask covering a face. While the virus is microscopic, she has seen it in the pained faces of her patients as they struggle to survive. She put on her warrior face for 15+ hour shifts while having life and death in her healing hands. Once one patient became healthy, there were five more behind them.

And sometimes frontline workers didn’t always get the rest they needed. When the virus struck Ashley’s husband, her curative care had to be taken home. Ashley was one of many health care workers who risked their lives to help save others.