My roommate Grace was a trauma nurse and emergency medic in a well-known International aid group. The job was thankless, difficult and unimaginably dangerous at times. Few people could deal with all the risks and stress it brought on a daily basis. Grace had been stationed in some of the most violate places on earth; often for weeks or months at a time. Between navigating the bloody war zones and dealing with exposure to deadly diseases, it had more than it’s share of undesirable challenges. None of that mattered to her. She sought to help out her fellow man. Grace was dedicated to making the world a better place. I need to emphasize the personal sacrifices she made here and now.

Whenever she came home, she just wanted to relax and unwind. I got that. I usually greeted her with a warm hug and then gave her a little space to decompress for a while. I think Grace appreciated not having to relive all the ugly horrors she survived. I didn’t ask. She knew I was always there if she needed to talk or get things off her chest. After a lengthy sleep marathon to recover from 16 hours of jet lag, she popped her head out the bedroom door last month and asked me what was for dinner. I usually had something in mind when she was scheduled to be home. When she finally awoke and was ready to eat, I had it ready.

Like a lot of people in public service, she didn’t have any time for a social life. Her brief, infrequent visits home (around me) represented most of her ‘social life’. The sacrifices she made in helping others were many but like anyone else, she had needs. Physical needs. I know she could’ve done a lot better than me but to my credit, I was considerate, willing and conveniently present. Those were big pluses in my favor. With her life and career being so complicated and unpredictable, she didn’t need a ‘significant other’ pressuring her to settle down. I didn’t rock the boat. I accepted the situation for what it was. A ‘roommate with benefits’ arrangement.

Despite the incredible intimacy we shared each time she returned home, I tried not to let my feelings get away from me. It seemed one sided. She gave off a: ‘don’t push it’, vibe. I wanted more but I didn’t want to risk what I already had with her. The day after her arrival, she told me she wasn’t feeling very well. I gave her some headache medicine and a cool washcloth for her head.

We slept in our own beds afterward. That was ‘the rule’ established to maintain ‘emotional boundaries’. The next morning I knocked on Grace’s bedroom door. She didn’t answer so I opened it a crack to check on her. I was startled to see that her face was puffy and swollen. She was sweating profusely and covered in clusters of red splotches. Her body temperature was 102.7. I poured a capful of medicine to bring her fever down and filled up a large water bottle to help her stay hydrated.

I hated to leave but my students in the classroom would be arriving soon. It was too short of a notice to arrange for a substitute. Grace smiled and assured me she’d be alright. After all, she was ‘home’. It was the one place in the whole world she could ‘afford’ to be sick. Shortly before I left the house, I took a wet wash cloth and wiped down her angry, inflamed skin. She smiled and thanked me for being “so good” to her. Can you imagine that? A person who devoted their whole life to helping others on a daily basis was thanking ‘me’ for trying to ease her discomfort! She was a true saint. It was as close to a traditional relationship as I’d ever have with her.

I didn’t call home on my lunch break. I was afraid Grace was asleep. She needed the rest so I left her be. In hindsight, that was a huge mistake. By the time I arrived home, she was nearly dead. Blood and vomit was everywhere. She had soiled the bed. Her skin was covered in festering hemorrhagic sores. Infected blood was oozing from every orifice. The bedroom looked like a crime scene. Only then did I realize that she had no ordinary sickness. I covered her face with a freezer bag of ice cubes to bring the fever down and called paramedics.

They took one look at her and immediately ran back out of the house like it was on fire! I thought they were abandoning her. The truth was, they went to retrieve their specialized, hazardous safety gear. After a quick examination of Grace while in full-body protective suits, they placed a HEPA mask on me and rushed both of us to the ambulance. On the ride, they grilled me on background questions to prep the high-risk medical team. They asked if she’d recently visited West Africa. Specifically Sierra Leone, Guinea, or Liberia.

No one used the ‘E’ word but we were all thinking it. I told them she was a humanitarian aid worker and traveled all over the world to help inoculate people in remote villages. It was entirely possible she’d visited those specific countries and could have come into contact with any number of deadly diseases. I assumed the organization she worked for has quarantine protocols in place when viral contamination was detected in the staff. If they do, it apparently failed.

Then came the really sensitive questions. ‘Had I came in physical contact with her or anyone else since Grace’s arrival at the house?’ I immediately told them we had been intimate the night before. Then I admitted that I washed her irritated skin with a wet wash cloth after she exhibiting the 102.7 degree fever. The questioning paramedic actually gasped in shock but his dismay was about to grow infinitely worse. I disclosed that I just came home from teaching six full classes of third graders AFTER wiping down her inflamed skin. I just shook my head and wept after that. I didn’t know. She didn’t either. We didn’t see it coming. It was all very clear in hindsight but at the time, it seemed like Grace just had a regular flu or a severe cold. I plead with the EMT’s to understand it wasn’t deliberate or malicious but they were cold and indifferent. It was their job to save lives. At that point it included their own.

I could see the mounting terror in their eyes through the hazmat masks. Their safety gear wasn’t rated for that level of danger or contagious biological agent. Not to mention that they walked right into the house, unprotected. I heard bits and pieces of the panicked radio correspondence between the driver and emergency crew, standing by. Unsurprisingly, we drove right past the hospital. They decided to fly us straight to the CDC in Atlanta. I didn’t know it at the time but federal emergency management agencies had just been deployed to assess the deadly situation and determine the dizzying threat level we that she and I had inadvertently caused.

The risk management team started evaluating quarantine procedures and who needed medical attention. I was still asymptomatic but mentally felt horrible. I had touched dozens of my students. They had no doubt touched countless others. Brothers, sisters, friends, their parents, etc. Ordinarily, casual contact between persons wasn’t enough to spread regular diseases but ‘E’ and other hemorrhagic fevers are incredibly contagious and easy to spread. They are passable, even before a victim exhibits any symptoms.

I was the potential angel of death for hundreds, or even thousands! The thought made me throw up. Of course the mobile hazmat crew assumed I was starting to show signs. At the time, my temperature was only 100 degrees. I assured them I felt ‘fine’ but they weren’t interested in my uneducated, naive opinion. I was the very person who possibly spread Ebola to hundreds of school children, parents, staff members, and medical personnel.

Every parent or guardian to my 159 regular students were quarantined as a precaution and monitored very closely. A loving action like a simple kiss on the cheek could possibly spread this insidious virus. Even with the single parent households, that meant a possibility of 211 more secondary exposures. It had an ugly domino effect. All teachers, staff members and their immediate families could be affected. Some of my students had extracurricular activities like sports or ballet too. Their coaches and instructors were at high risk, as were their spouses and children. Calling this situation a ‘nightmare’ was too kind. Literally thousands of innocent people had potential exposure to Ebola through my careless actions and infected fingertips.

Mid-way through the flight, I started feeling death in my bones. My fever spiked. I had chills, spontaneous vomiting and the classic symptoms of the ravenous disease. Grace was much, much worse. Her kidneys and several other organs were shutting down. The transport plane had some life-saving equipment but it wasn’t made to deal with that level of catastrophic attack on the human body. It was supposed to be a sterile containment vessel. The moment we touched down, they intended to go in and irradiate the quarantine area to cleanse and sterilize it.

If I hadn’t been channeling death at the time myself, I might have been more alarmed by what I saw on the runway. Heavily armed soldiers flanked our medical entourage. The news media had leaked the story and MP’s were preventing a mob of angry protesters from vigilante ‘justice’ and flame-throwers. To be honest, I felt so horrible about the situation that I wouldn’t cared. We were escorted by armored vehicle to the relative security of the CDC.

There were 75 beds set aside for the Ebola exposure. The NSA had other facilities prepared if the numbers grew beyond that. I felt like I’d handed hundreds of people a death sentence but my primary concern was Grace. They started her on the strongest anti-viral medications known to modern science and life support machines but it didn’t look good. Worse still, this outbreak was putting some of the greatest minds in medicine at risk as they treated us. Vomit, blood, urine, and feces. All the bodily fluids that came from us was contaminated with one of the most contagious and deadly pathogens in the world. We were producing hundreds of pounds of highly-toxic medical waste on top of everything else but I was too ill to care. My fever lingered around 105 for days, despite the powerful battery of drugs and world class medical care. My own life hung in the balance.

Grace went into a coma and died the next day. We were separated by a partition so I wasn’t aware. It’s a good thing I didn’t know. I wouldn’t survived if I had. The doctors and medical staff kept the truth from me to prevent crushing my spirit. Her body was cremated to prevent the spread of post-mortem infection. Her family attended a private memorial a week before I was released. As far as the domino fallout, we were relatively ‘lucky’. Only eleven other people came down with the infection. Because of early detection, they eventually made a full recovery. I’m grateful of that every day.

Grace was the first and only fatality out of the ‘Unlucky 13’ as the press dubbed us. Now, after a month to gain my strength back I’ve set out to write this op-ed piece in ‘The Times’ to tell a little bit about who Grace Strathmore was. Also, who she was not. I’ve read and watched ‘news’ features branding her some sort of Irresponsible tourist or a ‘Typhoid Mary’ agent of Ebola. Nothing could be further from the truth. She risked everything to help people caught up in the horrors of war and abject poverty. Ultimately that unselfish sacrifice cost her life. I knew her as well as anyone. Grace would have been absolutely mortified if she ever found out what happened because of her accidental exposure. It wasn’t intentional and it wasn’t negligence on her part or mine. She isn’t here to speak for herself or clear her name of the outright lies or distorted facts about her. I stand today to rectify that injustice. She was my roommate, friend and confidante. She was the very essence of Grace.