YouTubeJennifer Lopez had a special surprise for a healthcare worker in New York.
Hoda Kotb, Savannah Guthrie and NBCUniversal streaming service Peacock teamed up with the 50-year-old actress and singer to send a sweet thank you message to nurse Cassidy Toben.
Toben has been working as an emergency room nurse at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan for nine years and has been on the frontlines of the battle against the coronavirus pandemic.
"You realize quickly that you're not going to save everybody," she told Guthrie and Kotb via video chat during a recent episode of The At-Home Variety Show on Peacock. "You're not going to save a lot of people, and that's really devastating and it's scary. And the people, the beds that you see, you wanna help. And then they start to remind you of your family, and then you worry about your family and yourself."
While Toben said "there's definitely a lot of anxiety and fear," she also said she tries to stay positive.
"Every day when a patient gets discharged or their breathing tube gets taken out, they play 'Here Comes the Sun' over the loudspeaker," she said. "And we clap in the E.R.—we really clap—because it gives us a glimpse of hope."
So, Kotb and Guthrie decided to thank her by calling up one of their famous friends. That's when Lopez popped up on the screen and expressed her gratitude for Toben and her work.
"We are so grateful for everything that you do," she said. "Thank you so much."
Needless to say, Toben was "freaking out." In fact, she told the two-time Grammy nominee that the last time she "went out and had any socialization" was for the Super Bowl. As fans will recall, Lopez and Shakira performed during the Super Bowl Halftime Show.
"And [it's] something that is just such, like, a, you know, a thing in our culture that we look forward to every year and to think that that was only a few months ago and we were all celebrating something together as a country and now here we are," Toben said. "But thank you for that because it's really inspirational."
Kotb then shared how Toben had said Lopez reminds her of her fellow nurses because she calls them both "badasses."
"You guys absolutely are," Lopez agreed. "And again, like, thinking about what you have to go through every day—I was listening to what you were saying as [was] I was sneakily waiting to say hello—about, you know, you can't save everybody and how hard that must be and that kind of reality setting in and it just reminded me too of how difficult this time is and how challenging it's been."
She then called Toben, the doctors, the nurses and frontline workers "heroic." Lopez also invited Toben and her friends to her first concert once social distancing ends. Kotb and Guthrie joked they wanted to crash the party, too.
"Cassidy, we just invited ourselves!" Guthrie quipped.
Watch the video to see the sweet surprise.
(E! and NBC are both part of the NBCUniversal family).