In early March 2020, I gave a presentation to a group of ethicists and physicians on a novel coronavirus emerging in China. It was concerning, as there were 127, 863 confirmed cases and it seemed likely the virus would cause a global pandemic. Weeks later, one of the first known COVID cases in Los Angeles was seen in my hospital. By late April, we were in disaster-response mode, including a 24/7 incident command center and drastic changes in clinical operations to minimize infection and preserve PPE. The rest, as they say is history. In this talk, I will describe my experiences as a clinical ethicist responding to the first wave of COVID-19 surges in my community and the second, current, phase of navigating prolonged disruption in the healthcare environment. Along the way, I will focus on topics dear to medical ethics where I have personal experience: the ethics of care during surge; the messy business of developing and operationalizing ethically sufficient triage protocols; the effects of family clustering on surrogate decision making; compassionate approaches to hospital visitation during lockdown and subsequent phases of restricted liberties; and, anticipating the ethicists role in the future, with more rationing and less certainty on the horizon