Maria Guia Cabillon

If you’ve been to the emergency room at the Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn, you probably have heard the voice of Maria Guia Cabillon. You would hear her from down the hall and know that she was coming, even without seeing her, or you would hear her through the intercom system on your work phone. But now, the emergency room is quieter. Cabillon, the head nurse of Kings County Hospital’s emergency room, died on the afternoon of April 26 at the age of 63, after a long battle with COVID-19.

Born on January 4, 1957, Cabillon grew up with her three sisters in Iloilo City in the Philippines. Despite her aspiration to become a doctor, Cabillon chose nursing because her family couldn’t afford medical school. After graduating from the Corazon Locsin Montelibano Memorial Hospital/College of Nursing in 1979, she worked her way up to become a head nurse in the Philippines.

In the late 1980s, she decided to come to the U.S. even though she was already married and had three daughters. She wanted to provide a good education for her girls. “She said that we really had nothing back home,” said Cabillon’s daughter Fatima, who also became a nurse, under the influence of her mother.

Cabillon started at a nursing home and eventually landed nursing jobs at both Kings County Hospital and New York Community Hospital—she was still working at both places until she got sick at the end of March. Despite being a small woman, just five feet tall, Cabillon was brave and feisty, according to both her daughter Fatima and her colleague, Shane DeGracia. She was able to stand up to violent patients who were having psychotic breaks and calm them down. Having gone through SARS and Ebola, Fatima says, she was not afraid of COVID-19. “She says, ‘well, you’re a nurse, you have to be brave. You have to think about these patients, that they need you,’” said Fatima.

If it wasn’t for COVID-19, Cabillon could have retired in two years, after more than 30 years of nursing. But DeGracia says Cabillon loved her job so much that she didn’t seem to want retirement. “Honestly, I didn’t think she was gonna retire when the two years came. I don’t see it in her to leave the emergency room,” said DeGracia.

As the head nurse, Cabillon was the one who held the emergency room together—and made it a home. Everyone called her “Mama Guia,” or “Nanay,” which means “mom” in the Filipino language of Tagalog. She loved everybody unconditionally, DeGracia says, and took them under her wings as if they were her own children. Apart from being a mentor in the nursing field, she was the one that people turned to when they had personal problems; she was the one that former co-workers from the early 1990s would still visit; she was the one that police officers from the 71st Precinct were familiar with.

Cabillon was also a foodie and made sure her ER children were well fed. There were always chocolate, seasonal candies, Cheez Doodles, and bottles of Mountain Dew on her desk. She would make Filipino adobo, her favorite dish, and share it with doctors and nurses.

“She’s the mother head,” said DeGracia. “She’s the matriarch of our ED.”

On the night before Cabillon was admitted to hospital, she called her staff and asked one of them to switch the time sheets so that the incoming shift was able to sign them. “Instead of resting at this hour, she was thinking about work,” said DeGracia, “She was thinking about making sure that people get paid, and that they’re able to clock in and out.”

Caibillon was also a patient advocate, her colleague and daughter say. If an ICU patient needed a bed, she would try to make sure the patient got a bed; when patients were assigned beds upstairs, she would be on top of it and make sure they were sent upstairs in a timely manner.

“She was the anchor. She’s the captain of that ship and really tried to do smooth sailing, despite rough waves,” DeGracia said.

If you go to Kings County Hospital’s emergency room now, you won’t be able to hear Cabillon’s big voice and laughter, or her saying “I’m going to kill you” in a joking way. But she will forever remain a guiding light to the ER.

Maria Guia Cabillon is survived by her husband Roberto; their four daughters, Fatima, Grace, Francine, and April; and two grandchildren, Francesca and Sean.