New realities beget new rituals, and, as is the case now, they’re often a matter of life and death. For example, when Dr. Robert Wright gets home from work these days, he immediately strips off his clothes and jumps in the shower for a final sanitizing scrub.

Wright ​— ​athletic, trim, and endowed with craggy man-mountain good looks ​— ​serves as medical director of Cottage Hospital’s Medical Intensive Care Unit (ICU). That’s where doctors stick ventilator tubes down the throats of COVID-19 patients whose lungs can no longer suck in enough oxygen to stay alive.

All this makes Wright ​— ​and his ICU team ​— ​the ultimate caregivers for the sickest of Santa Barbara’s sick.