US Man Woke From Coma, Learned Wife Of 24 Years Had Died Of Coronavirus

When Lawrence Nokes, 69, was taken off the respirator on April 10, doctors told his family that he had a good chance of recovering.

Nokes worked as a nursing assistant at Pleasant View Nursing Home in Mt. Airy, Maryland. He'd been attending to patients just days before 84 of the facility's 95 residents tested positive for covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. It was one of the biggest outbreaks of the virus in the state.

Nokes was admitted to Carroll Hospital Center on March 30 and intubated. After about a week in a coma, his prognosis improved, his family said. He started to breathe on his own.

When he regained consciousness, Nokes asked for just one person: Minnette Nokes, 71, his wife of 24 years.

The vivacious, feisty woman who opened the door two decades ago when he came to drop off a pack of sugar. The person who greeted him after work each day at their quiet home in Westminster, Maryland, often resting a grandchild or great-grandchild on her hip. The woman who, on Sunday nights, slow-danced with him to Patti LaBelle.

From his hospital bed, Nokes asked repeatedly for Minnette. His doctors hesitated. When he grew agitated, his family members knew they had to tell him the truth.

In the days after sending her husband to the emergency room, Minnette had started feeling extremely tired, her daughters said. She worried about her husband, whom she called "Junior" or "June-bug." Because she was under quarantine, she could not see her friends and family.

On April 7, a day before her 72nd birthday, Minnette Nokes had a heart attack and died in her sleep. The medical examiner's office said she posthumously tested positive for covid-19.

Once Lawrence Nokes found out, his breathing grew raspy again, recalled his stepdaughter, Carrie Kelly. He asked medical staffers to let him sign a "do-not-resuscitate" order indicating that he did not want to receive CPR if his heart stopped beating. He also asked to stop further medical treatment and to be transferred to hospice.

"He was brokenhearted," Kelly said. "He did any and everything for my mother, so this - it took its toll."

Over five days, Nokes called his children and grandchildren, giving them instructions on what to do with his belongings and telling them that he loved them. When stepdaughter Chaunda Stewart called him, he kept apologizing, she said, because despite what his loved ones told him, Nokes felt partially responsible for his wife getting sick.

He died April 15, eight days after Minnette. As of Tuesday, he is one of 11 nursing-home employees in Maryland who have died of the virus.

"I'm still angry at Pleasant View, still confused at how quickly we lost them both," Kelly said. "Junior was a good person to so many people. They both were."

Lawrence Nokes was raised in Union Bridge, Maryland, a small Carroll County town of about 1,000 residents where "everybody knew everybody," said Paul Jones, a childhood friend. When Nokes grew older and moved away, he still called himself a "country boy," his relatives said, and still carried himself with the same laid-back, mellow attitude of a man who grew up running free in large, green fields.

Minnette Nokes was born in Baltimore and could not have been more different, her daughters said, chuckling. She was passionate and funny, often the life of the party - and she knew it. Every year, she celebrated her birthday like it was a milestone, Kelly said.

For her 70th, nearly two years ago, her children threw her a surprise party, inviting the many friends and family members who had come to love her. Kelly remembers her mother sauntering down the stairs to greet the hundred or so people packed into the house. She had a twinkle in her eye, Kelly said, and a smile that said, "yes, you should be celebrating me." At the party, Lawrence Nokes stood tall in a corner, gazing at his wife.

"She was the light," Kelly said. "For all of us, but especially for him."

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