Dima Hooper has been unconscious for four days.
The 53-year-old is hooked up to a ventilator to help her breathe at the Royal Free Hospital in London.
Her family are worried she could die with COVID-19.
Now, as she lies in intensive care, there is hope.
Dima slowly opens her eyes and begins to regain consciousness.
Consultant Dr Steve Ward clutches her hands.
"Can you try to lift my hands up?", he asks.
Dima can carry out the task.
Moments later she gives a thumbs-up.
The unpredictable nature of COVID means doctors are unsure about her road to recovery.
Dima, an NHS caterer, is one of more than 6,000 COVID patients treated at the Royal Free Hospital and its sister site in Barnet since the start of the pandemic.
Just over 1,000 of those patients have died - including 347 in January alone.
Sky News spent a month filming in the hospitals' intensive care wards during the peak of the UK's second wave of coronavirus in January and February.
When we began filming at the Royal Free, more than 300 COVID patients were taking up three quarters of the beds.
Around 90 of the patients were in intensive care and being kept alive on ventilators.
The NHS was dealing with the worst crisis in its history. It soon emerged a second crisis was looming behind the COVID one.
The virus has sapped the health service of its resources and the staff of their energy.
While doctors and nurses have coped admirably, many of them are broken and some feel they can't go on.
Here is the story from inside the COVID wards.
Nicolae Ursachi was one of the sickest COVID patients at the Royal Free Hospital when he was admitted in December.
The 62-year-old was unconscious and on a ventilator for 40 days. Doctors feared the worst.
"There were many nights when most of us thought he wouldn't be there the following day," says Dr Ward. "He was incredibly unwell."
Nicolae, a self-employed decorator, had to stop work in 2016 after he was diagnosed with a neurological disorder.
Living with his two daughters and their children, the whole family tested positive for COVID at the end of November.
His family believe one of the children contracted the virus at school.
As Nicolae's condition worsened, he was admitted to the Royal Free Hospital on 4 December 鈥� but he continued to deteriorate.
He had pneumonia, his heart was weak and he had blood clots in his lungs.
Doctors called his family just days before Christmas to say he probably wouldn't make it through the night.
But after more than a month in intensive care, Nicolae is able to respond to his family during a video call.
His daughter Ana says: "I cannot tell you how happy we are, how relieved we are, how thankful we are to god and to all the care at the Royal Free Hospital.
"We never lost hope. He's a miracle."
A week later and Nicolae can stand up with the assistance of a walking machine and three members of staff.
He is breathless within four steps and has to sit down. He is also fiercely determined and after some rest he wants more.
"It's like a marathon, that you have to train for," therapy assistant Chloe Davies says.
"That's what we explain it to the patients as. It's a marathon, not a sprint."
Ana says her sister had told her to prepare for life without their father when he fell critically ill.
"I said: 'No, we never give up hope'."
Among the stories of hope, there is also tragedy.
Tony Brown hasn't seen his wife Linda for more than two weeks.
"I really miss her," he says.
"Hopefully I will (see her). That's all I want now. I don't want anything else in life."
The 73-year-old is on a CPAP ward 鈥� where patients are using high-flow oxygen but not the invasive internal tubes used in intensive care.
He is convinced he caught COVID at work, as a key worker delivering bread. Linda also contracted the virus and is recovering at home.
Tony blames people for not wearing masks and ignoring social distancing.
"If people would have taken a lot more care when this come out and hadn't ignored it, we wouldn't be such a mess we're in," he says.
"We wouldn't have had so many deaths, so many people who are critically ill.
"And the NHS are fantastic, brilliant. We just all hope that we will live and come out of it."
The virus has made him feel "absolutely terrible", Tony says.
"I've had some very bad nights, very worrying nights," he adds.
"Twice I went to ring my wife, tell her I weren't coming... It is very hard鈥� Oh I miss her鈥 really miss her."
Tony died a day later.
Linda was speaking to him via video phone when he passed away.
Linda, pictured here with Tony on their wedding day in 2000, gave Sky News permission to report what happened to her husband.
Michelle O'Shea has only had two hours sleep. The intensive care nurse at the Royal Free Hospital is running on adrenaline.
Specialist ICU nurses usually offer one-to-one care but during the COVID crisis they were managing ratios of one-to-three. On some wards it was one specialist nurse to every four patients.
"It seemed like this tsunami of people came in," Michelle says.
"It was the first time in my career I felt like I couldn't breathe.
"The volume just came in too thick and fast.
"And there actually aren't enough ICU nurses. You can't magic them out of nowhere."
The emotional toll on respiratory physio Clare Bendall at Barnet Hospital is clear, when she talks about the number of patients who have died with COVID.
"I think this sounds silly but the worst thing is when we do our ward books in the morning," she says.
"It's when the amount of RIPs outnumber the ones that have made it down to the wards.
"I think that's when it really kicks in."
Fighting back tears, Clare adds: "They're a lot younger. In the first wave, sorry, I remember thinking that could be mum. That could be my aunt.
"And now I'm thinking that could be me. That could be my brother, my boyfriend.
"We've lost people in their 30s, in their 40s. It's heart-breaking."
Clare barely pauses before collecting herself and getting straight back to work.
Michael is barely conscious in intensive care when his family make a video call to speak to him.
Despite his condition after contracting COVID, his family are full of optimism.
"He can hear us, he's opening his eyes," his wife says.
She tells Michael: "So many people love you so much.
"Whenever you're ready, we can drop everything off to you that you need. We're waiting for you."
During the call, in the opposite bay, a patient in his early 60s is wheeled to the mortuary after dying with COVID.
"It's really upsetting," says intensive care nurse Harriet Goudie.
"On a daily level, you're having to talk to families and reassure them but at the same time you might have patients who are sadly passing away in literally the bay opposite.
"It's trying to shield that from patients and families and make things look as normal as possible but it's really difficult."
Harriet says there are challenges with treating patients in an outpatient ward that has been converted into an intensive care unit.
"In these bed spaces, to try and fit all the ICU equipment in - we're trying to cram it into small spaces," she says.
"We're just running out of things like plugs, for example. We don't physically have enough plug sockets in some areas."
Nineteen days later after we first meet Michael, he is recovering and is able to speak 鈥� but he can only manage a few words at a time.
The 59-year-old says he was comforted by the voices of his family when they called him at his worst point.
It is another three days before he is able to leave intensive care.
He wants to thank all the medical staff who have treated him but he isn't able to recognise all of them.
"They kept me alive," he says. "It's unbelievable."
A week after regaining consciousness, Dima is feeling stronger.
She is sat up in chair and has started walking again but still can't speak.
"She was incredibly sick," her brother Sam says.
"I mean I kind of assumed that was going to be it, that weekend she went in.
"So, she was in a coma, she was on full life support. I kind of prepared myself for the worst."
Dr Ward says he expects Dima to recover well but isn't sure about the long-term effects of COVID on her body.
"How that will affect her lungs 10-15 years down the line, only time will tell," he says.
Two weeks after waking up, Dima can talk again despite still breathing through a tube in her windpipe.
She explains how a negative COVID test had convinced her she didn't have the virus. She had taken antibiotics for coughing and vomiting but then she had passed out.
The first thing she remembered was waking up and seeing a Sky News cameraman.
"It was just surreal," she says. "I'm glad I'm on the mend anyway.
"I'm just lucky that I'm alive. I just kept saying to myself: 'Please, I need to get strong. I don't belong here. I don't belong here.'
"I鈥檓 probably one of the wellest people here. It鈥檚 very sad."
It takes another two weeks for Dima to be discharged from hospital.
She is reunited with her brother Sam who drives her back to his home in Wolverhampton.
Dima is now preparing to return to her job as a caterer at Homerton Hospital in east London.
Nurse Harriet Goudie says often she and many of her colleagues "don't go home feeling like we've done a good job".
"I think that's one of the hardest things to take away from coronavirus for me," she says.
"Just that feeling that you couldn't do enough for people - it's really difficult."
Harriet's colleague Michelle O'Shea has been a nurse for more than 20 years but isn't sure she can deal with another surge of coronavirus patients.
"It sounds awful鈥� but at times you don't even know the name of your patient by the end," she says. "It felt like the care part went.
"I feel ashamed to say, it was like we're managing bodies. We were trying to keep bodies alive."
Michelle is also struggling with flashbacks.
"A sound will trigger something," she says.
"I鈥檓 not very good at the moment."
Medical staff have expressed concerns about how many ICU nurses will stay on for next winter.
Many nurses are from abroad and may decide to return home.
"If another (surge) comes before the end of the year, I just don't see how we will have enough ICU nurses," Michelle says.
"I think there's going to be a lot of loss within the industry 鈥� in terms of staff having to leave or take some time off, just to recover."
The hospitals now face a huge backlog of surgical procedures that have been postponed during the pandemic.
ICU consultant Dr Steve Ward says "there's almost no end in sight".
"I don't think we'll ever get back to normal," he says.
"I can't see how we're going to return to the Royal Free ICU as it was at the end of 2019. I think that's just now history."
Watch Through The Storm: Inside The COVID Wards on Sky Documentaries on Thursday at 9pm and on Sky News on Friday at 9pm.
Credits
Reporting: Jason Farrell, home editor
Digital reporting: David Mercer, news reporter
Production: Liz Lane, producer
Pictures: Andy Portch, camera operator
Design: Taylor Stuart, designer