Rikers Island Correction Officer Gianna Abreu, 37, said she was refused medical aid for hours at the notorious jail — until a fellow officer whom she calls “an angel sent by God” stepped in. 

“It was my first day back from being out on COVID,” Abreu told The Post. “I was very sick with it.”

She said she wasn’t feeling well from the start of her 4 p.m. shift on July 12, and around 9:30 p.m., a nurse took her blood pressure.

Both she and the nurse were shocked to see a reading of 163/100. The nurse told Abreu she needed to see a doctor and Abreu called her captain and asked to be relieved from her post guarding inmates.

“I told the captain, ‘Please send relief,’” Abreu recalled. “The captain said, ‘I don’t have anybody.’ I could have passed out right there.”

Abreu remained at her post. But by 11:30 p.m., she had gone from bad to worse.

“At this point, I couldn’t even stand up,” she said.

She continued to call for relief and also asked her bosses repeatedly to call for EMS. Eventually, they told her to go home.

That’s when she went out to wait for the bus and ran into fellow CO Tara Gadson.

Abreu was on the phone telling her spouse she was sick and crying when Gadson noticed and approached her.

“I asked her what was going on and she handed me the phone,” Gadson said. “It was her spouse and she said, ‘Can you please call EMS?’ ”

Gadson said she had seen her fellow officer crying inside the jail earlier but didn’t realize what was wrong.

She called EMS, but Gadson said the operator told her to call back if Abreu’s health worsened.

“I said she really needs help,” Gadson recalled. “She’s sweating. She’s hot.”

That’s when Abreu passed out.

“As soon as I sat down, she passed out and fell into my arms,” Gadson said. “When that happened, I called EMS again. Another officer comes out and says, ‘What happened?’ I’m like, ‘She passed out.’ ”

Gadson recently had a close call herself when her car flipped over on her way home from a church event and another correction officer came to her aid after happening upon the crash on his way home from work. She said she was upset that Abreu had to suffer.

“I didn’t understand why they didn’t call EMS if her blood pressure was that high,” Gadson recalled. 

Benny Boscio, president of the Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association, said his workers are denied immediate medical attention “far too often” at the city jail that’s known for violence and inmate deaths. He has said the city Department of Correction has been requiring officers to work double and triple shifts.

“Officer Abreu should have never been put in a possible life-threatening situation like this, which could have been much worse, had it not been for the diligence of Correction Officer Gadson, who came to her aid,” he said. “This incident should serve as a loud wake-up call to some of the supervisors in our agency to stop treating our officers, who are overworked, like cattle.”

When Abreu woke up, she was in Mount Sinai Hospital in Queens and Gadson was at her side, she said.

“She’s the one who called 911 for me,” Abreu said. “When I woke up at the hospital, she was still there. It was 2 a.m. and she was still waiting. They didn’t put me down as a John Doe because she knew my name.”

She said since the incident, the jail administration has been trying to force her to come back to work even though she hadn’t been able to get a cardiologist appointment that was prescribed by doctors. 

Abreu, a mom of a 10-year-old daughter, said Gadson saved her.

“I truly believe she was an angel sent from God,” she said. “If she wasn’t there, I would have lost my life.”

The city Departmen of Correction didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.