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On March 17, Mount Sinai West nurse manager Janet Cuaycong was on the phone with her assistant, Kious Kelly, begging him to go to the hospital. 
The two staffers were battling COVID-19 but Kelly, who suffered from asthma, had taken a turn for the worse. 
“I said ‘Ki this is something you don’t fool around with, I want you to call 911’ and I was crying on the phone because he didn’t want to go,” Cuaycong, 56, recalled to The Post. 
“He said ‘no I’m going to sleep through it, I’ll be waking up and feel better tomorrow.’” 
Cuaycong, who was in New Jersey and too far away to respond to Kelly’s Manhattan home, frantically tried to convince him and had her director call him and do the same. 

Finally, Kelly made his way to Mount Sinai’s Upper East Side location so he could have some privacy from his colleagues at the Midtown location. That same night, he was rushed to the intensive care unit and intubated the next day.
Even though Cuaycong knew he was sedated, she sent him text messages everyday, hoping he’d be able to pull through.
“Kious, be strong,” Cuaycong texted one day as “tears rolled down” from her eye.

She sent one final text March 24 — and received the grim news the next morning that he

had passed away

, just minutes after her message was sent.

Do you have a nominee for The Post’s Hero of the Day? E-mail heroes@nypost.com.