THERE IS NO hope of outrunning the suffering that has settled into the hospital and the world around it, so Andrew Ibrahim laces up his blue waterproof sneakers and walks. In the time it has taken the daffodils to poke through the loamy soil and dapple Ann Arbor with pale yellow blossoms—about as long as it has taken Covid-19 to kill some 4,000 people across Michigan and over 60,000 in the United States—Ibrahim, a seventh-year surgery resident at the University of Michigan’s hospital system, has gone from a semi-oblivious commuter to a connoisseur of suburban sanctuaries.

In the same short timespan, Ibrahim has also gone from surgeon in training to critical care doctor treating severely ill Covid patients in a pop-up ICU that he helped design in the university’s main hospital. He likens the metamorphosis to the tempering of an alloy: After the relentless pressure of a weeklong ICU rotation, he plunges into an off-week of rest. Toward the end of each cycle, he senses new flexibility and resilience within himself.

It takes a mile or two for Ibrahim to shake off the anxiety, to convince himself that he does not need to be anywhere and that no one needs him. As spring gets off to an icy start with squalls and snow, he has taken to rambling ever farther from home on his days off from the Covid ICU—5.8 miles one day, 7.7 the next.

He walks slowly, temporarily liberated from the stifling masks that he must wear at all times inside the hospital—a surgical mask handed to him by a security guard the moment he steps through the hospital doors, an N95 any time he enters a Covid patient’s room. He inhales the damp spring air deep into his lungs. For hours at a stretch, he follows the asphalt bike paths and muddy trails wherever they lead, discovering parks and ponds tucked away in neighborhoods he has driven through for years without ever knowing what treasures they hid.

Staring out at the dull reflection of an overcast sky on tea-stained water, Ibrahim considers the heft of the past decade—medical school, the grueling intensity of his surgical training now just three months shy of completion, a series of personal disappointments, and a family tragedy that nearly broke him. In his muddy blue shoes, with a few miles under his belt, Ibrahim feels steady, as if everything in his life has prepared him for this exact moment.

Back in the hospital, it’s a different story.