Mississippi health officials say there are no more ICU beds available in several of the state’s top hospitals. The rise of Covid-19 patients and deaths in the community became overwhelming for Nichole Atherton, an ICU nurse at Singing River Ocean Springs Hospital.

After working through the pandemic, Atherton resigned from her job last week.

“We’ve had to watch a lot of people die,” she told CNN on Tuesday. “As a nurse, you’re called to save people and to help people get better and sometimes it feels like we’re fighting a losing battle.”

She said Mississippi has a high hospitalization rate and a low number of people getting vaccinated. This makes it feel like health care workers are “fighting an un-winnable war,” she said.

Atherton said of the 12 people in the 12-bed ICU she works in, all of them are sick with Covid-19 and all of them are unvaccinated.

She said one of the most heartbreaking stories she has seen recently was a new mother who had to meet her baby for the first time on a video call.

“We’re trained to deal with death, as a nurse, and to help people die with dignity when that time comes, but seeing this much death day in and day out for this extended period of time – it becomes unbearable and the trauma that it gives you, it’s not something that will easily go away,” she added.

Atherton said that she wants people to choose to wear masks and get the vaccine because veteran nurses won’t be able to cope with this level of trauma indefinitely. As a result, the nursing staff taking care of patients will become less and less experienced, something she said will be “extremely unsafe.”

“To call us heroes but not do what you can to protect yourself and to protect us, it’s just words and words don’t save lives, actions save lives,” she said.