You see it on her sleeve — Sonya Bryson-Kirksey wears number 67.

That’s also how many days she’s been out of the hospital since treatment for COVID-19.

“I felt really lonely. We weren’t able to have visitors, and because I had such a bad cough and fever where I wasn’t feeling good a lot of the time,” said Bryson-Kirksey.

Coming off the high of the Tampa Bay Lightning’s second Stanley Cup win in a row, celebrating with fans along the Riverwalk on July 12, to silence alone in a hospital bed at the James A. Haley Veterans Hospital just four days later.

“Every morning when I woke up, I felt like I was blessed to take another breath,” said Bryson-Kirksey.

Bryson-Kirksey also battles multiple sclerosis, complicating her fight even more - spending 30 days in the hospital, eight in the ICU, wondering how she was going to sing again.

“What people don’t realize, and I’ve been saying, you get new lungs after COVID. It’s not the same, your lungs don’t even work the same. You have to teach your lungs to do what they did before,” said Bryson-Kirksey.

But the Air Force veteran is a fighter, and each of those 30 days, she kept her eyes on the prize - to trade the sounds of the hospital, for the sounds of the crowds at the bolts home opener on October 12.

“It was so emotional. I barely got through the anthem. And if you go back through the video, you can hear all the cracks and cringles in my throat and voice. I sounded like I was going to erupt at any moment,” said Bryson-Kirksey.

She’s sung at hundreds of Lightning games over the last nine years, but this one was different.

She wasn’t only singing the anthem to a crowd, she was singing the anthem to her family, who helped pull her through one of life’s toughest journeys.

“I don’t look at the fans as fans, I look at them as family,” said Bryson-Kirksey.