"Every story can be told. The tricky part of telling a story, however, is making a case where there is little or no evidence. But that part is always well managed by fiction to facilitate the individual thought in understanding what might have actually happened" – Victor Brachie

 

My heart is out of control, this love is nearly not dying in the state of a lady I have loved with all my heart, a dedicated doctor, a wonderful woman, a well respected young lady who devoted her life fighting communicable disease, like the one she had been infected with.

Three years after our marriage with two young children, she had come home to break the news to me, she was going to work in Sierra Leon for a month, I was happy for her because I knew it had been her dream to travel outside Ghana to offer her relentless service to others.

That very day when she had to leave, we had dinner with the entire family, hers and mine, we were all happy she was leaving for a month, I was also teased on how I will miss her, by then, my sister had come in to take care of the children for me, my work would not really give me the time to take care of the children as my wife did.

The last words that keeps ringing a bell in my head was when she asked my last child, Natalie, to take care of daddy, I smiled and shared a tear, I will really miss you my love, I had said when she finally approached me to say goodbye for a month journey, it was going to be tough, she had been my best friend, my lovely wife and my kids mother.

Two weeks after she had been to Sierra Leon, she called me and spoke about all the entertaining moments she had had with the health experts in Sierra Leon, she also told me about her desire to travel with the team to Liberia to complete her two weeks there. I didn’t say no, but I told her to be careful.

A day to her arrival, a ministry of health official vehicle parked in front of my house, a representative from the health ministry had come to deliver a letter, it had a postal address of Liberia, joy filled my heart, I knew it was my beloved wife.

I didn’t rush to read the letter on my own, I wanted to read it together with my children, I called it a letter from our mother, they both smiled, the eldest asked me when she will come, which I assured her that very soon, mummy will come.

As I began reading the letter, I felt something was not right, it didn’t seemed she had written this piece, I paused and framed a line of three to please my children, I sent them to bed and came back to read the letter on my own, tears dropped, my heart panicked, and I could not naturally breath… All my senses seemed to have seized and my head seemed to be experiencing a drill been pulled out.

How did it happen, I asked myself, she loved this job, why will God punish me for her kind heart, why will God take away the good people from this earth, I couldn’t hold the pain in me, locked myself inside my room and cried the hell out of me.

The next morning, my youngest daughter had come into the room to wake me up, mummy has called she said. I woke up and rushed downstairs to redial the number, it went through, a man picked up, he mentioned my name and I responded, he remained silent and asked me to come to the government isolation center.

I felt weak the more as I drove closer to the Isolation center, I was welcomed and asked to put on a protective suit. After wearing the suit, I was asked to follow a health official who was to take me to a big hall with people sealed inside  rubber tube, the man told me these were suspected ebola cases.

He took me to a room where there was only one of those rubber tubes I had seen back there, and then he pointed his finger towards the only rubber tube and told me, that is where your wife lies. I began to cry, I couldn’t hold my pain, my mind went back to the time I had said goodbye to her when she was leaving for Sierra Leon.

I carefully walked to the tube, her eyes were open, she smiled and shared a tear, her lips were dry and her eyes were so tired that she could hardly keep her eyes open for two minutes, her hands couldn’t move as they had when she held me by the hand the day we had married and the day she open her arms to embrace me when she had given birth to Judith, our last born. She tried whispering something to me, but I knew she was trying to tell me she was sorry. I felt the difficulty in speaking, like there were no words I could easily use, I was totally dead with words.

The doctor walked to me and told me there was still hope that she could survive, if we intensified our prayer for her, affirming that there was no cure for this Ebola disease.

The next morning, I had prepared porridge for her, it was her favorite, I sent the children to school and immediately rushed to the isolation center. I dropped the whole lunch box, her body was not in the tube she had been placed yesterday, I impatiently held the doctor who had just walked into the hall by his lab coat and demanded for my wife.

He bow down his head and back at me, all he could say was, she was gone. I drew my hands from his coat and dropped to the ground in tears, I have lost a mother and a wife, a friend and a counselor. She was dead. A beautiful family life had been closed; a new chapter of pain awaits me.

To all who in one way or the other, have lost love ones in this Ebola outbreak, I pray God strengthens you and hold you up in all things. Amen.