Bravery and Hope: 7 Days on the Front Line, a one-hour, primetime special set at Montefiore Medical Center in Norwood will air Friday, May 15 at 9:00 p.m. on the CBS Television Network. It tells the story of a global crisis through the people of one city, one community and one hospital.

In the midst of a pandemic that has paralyzed the world, a team of CBS News journalists follows emergency physicians and critical care specialists, struggling to save patients suffering from COVID-19.

The documentary makers go to the floors of the largest hospital in the hardest-hit borough of New York City as Montefiore Medical Center’s Moses Campus bursts with nearly 700 patients, 80 percent of whom are diagnosed with COVID-19.

The CBS News team, clad in protective equipment, spend seven days in the emergency department and intensive care units, following physicians as they urgently place patients on breathing machines and resuscitate others suffering cardiac failure.

The documentary shows how medical staff fear getting sick and exposing their families, even as they treat the gravely ill. “We’re often talking about life and death situations. There are no small emergencies. They’re all patients having respiratory distress or cardiac arrest,” says Dr. Michelle Gong, chief of Critical Care Medicine.

The documentary also shows how the hospital had to convert an auditorium to treat the staggering increase in COVID-19 patients, 70 of whom died during the week CBS News were on site filming. Alongside the loss, there are victories; in that same timespan, more than 300 patients recovered and were able to go home.

Nurse Jasmine Christakos, a Bronx native, dances whenever the hospital overhead speaker announces a “happy code,” signaling a patient has been discharged or taken off a ventilator. “It’s just so hopeful and brings so much joy during dark times and reminds us that people do go home. People do beat this,” Christakos says.

The documentary captures the toll the disease has taken on one of the poorest and worst-stricken neighborhoods in New York City and the nation.

A Bronx father lights candles and prays that his son, a first responder, will recover and come home from the hospital. From the back of a pickup truck, a parish priest rolls through the neighborhood with a loudspeaker, blessing the sick and homebound.

Selena Thomas, a Montefiore nurse, grows weary as she counts the lives lost to a cruel and mysterious virus. “It’s necessary for us to acknowledge that some communities have been touched by COVID more than others,” Thomas says. “If we don’t acknowledge that, we can’t fix the problem.”