As the death toll in Sierra Leone was rising, Doctors Without Borders was working hard to establish clinics in the affected areas so that individuals infected by the virus could be quarantined away from the rest of the population. However, one of the biggest hurdles they faced in the midst of this epidemic was finding doctors who were willing to go to these countries. Many doctors who normally donated their time to Doctors Without Borders shied away from volunteering because the Ebola virus is so deadly and many felt there were not enough precautions in place to prevent becoming infected themselves.

But one doctor, who did not feel that way, was a spritely young woman, Dr. Jessica Bradley who was two years out of medical school. Jessica had recently begun her residency as an infectious disease specialist and felt that this was an opportunity not only to help, but to study the effects of the Ebola virus first hand. When Jessica arrived in Sierra Leone, there were 20 deaths a day that could be linked to the Ebola virus. She was tasked with overseeing the construction of an isolation center for a small rural village in the heart of the Loma Mountains that had been hit hard by the virus.

Jessica had been briefed by the director that the area to which she was travelling had experienced some unrest due to the virus. A team of doctors in the area had attempted to take a blood sample from a corpse that was believed to have died from Ebola. However, the team was stopped by an angry mob wielding machetes. The mob believed that the person had died from high-blood pressure and felt that drawing blood would desecrate the body. When security forces tried to intervene and defend the doctors, a riot ensued leaving two people dead.

The director explained that many of the people who live in these rural villages have never been to a doctor before. Their primary form of medical intervention are shamans who offer herbal and spiritual remedies. Therefore, they tend to be very skeptical of medical doctors because they are uneducated about how a doctor can benefit them. So one of the biggest hurdles that Jessica faced after constructing the isolation center would be convincing the local population to allow their loved ones to be placed in the center. Most families had local traditions of remaining bedside with loved ones during sickness, which is a big reason why the virus was spreading so rapidly in Sierra Leone.

But the director explained to Jessica that there was another doctor from the US who was going to be joining them in a week’s time. This doctor knows the language and will work with Jessica in the villages to form relationships and convince the villagers to release their loved ones to the isolation center. Jessica was thrilled that as opposed to simply working with a translator, she would be working with another doctor who could help her get a grasp on this epidemic. She was thrilled, until she read the name of the doctor coming to join her – Dr. Harper Malone.

Harper had been a classmate of Jessica’s while in medical school. In fact, Harper had been Jessica’s only real competition for the top spot in their graduating class. Harper graduated number 1 and Jessica graduated number 2. But it wasn’t the fact that Harper had simply beat out Jessica for the top spot. It was how Harper beat out Jessica that really drove her crazy. Let me tell you a little bit about Jessica Bradley.

To put it mildly, Jessica was a very hard worker and she had to be because Jessica had grown up in difficult circumstances. Jessica came from the coal mining region of Floyd County, Kentucky. Her father was a coal miner and her mother worked as a chambermaid at one of the local motels. Life was good for Jessica until her mother passed away from breast cancer when Jessica was only seven. Jessica’s father fell into a deep depression and began drinking heavily. His descent in to alcoholism rendered him incapable of caring for his daughter. Jessica learned very quickly that if she was going eat, it was up to her to go to the store, prepare the food and clean up after herself. In effect, she became the caretaker for her father.

His drinking eventually led to his dismissal from the coal mine, which forced Jessica to begin working full time when she was 14. Because of her work schedule, she was regularly absent from school, which wasn’t anything shocking because 50% of the students in Floyd County dropped out of school to begin working during their freshman year. The difference between Jessica and all her peers is that Jessica really wanted to be in school. She knew that school was the only way she was going to be able to create a better life herself. So she went to all of her teachers and explained her situation. Her teachers would provide her with synopses of all the lessons she missed and on the days she was present, she would make-up quizzes and tests.

So every night, Jessica would get home from her job. She would make dinner for her father and whatever woman he had managed to bring home from the bar the previous night, then she would study. Jessica was usually up until 3 or 4 in the morning because she was not a naturally smart person. Jessica had to work hard to learn all of that information and she had no help. Then she would sleep 2 or 3 hours and do it all over again the next day. She did this for four years and graduated from high school with 4.0 grade point average and received a full scholarship to study in the honors program at the University of Kentucky.

That summer, a month before Jessica was about to leave for school, Jessica’s father called the University of Kentucky, without her knowledge, and told the office of admissions that his daughter would not be attending school because of family obligations. Jessica arrived at her dorm on move-in day to discover that she was not on any list; she had no roommate and could not register for classes. When she approached the office of admissions, the counselor said, “We gave your slot to someone else because your father called us and said you weren’t coming to school any longer.” Jessica was absolutely crushed.

She ran out of the office, sat on the outside steps and just started balling. All these thoughts were running through her head about having to go home, working that horrible job and taking care of her dad. She was so mad that she wanted to explode. Just when Jessica was about to get up to go home, the admissions officer came running out of the building and found her. He said that he had spoken to the dean of admissions and her scholarship had been reinstated. She could come to school free of charge.

Jessica was so overjoyed that she gave the admissions officer a kiss. Jessica vowed that she would never go home to see her father again. She studied incessantly. She worked day and night just like she had in high school. She graduated with the top GPA in the biology department and was accepted to the University of Kentucky Medical School, again with a full ride. During her first year of medical school, Jessica was interviewed by a reporter from the Lexington Herald who had heard about her story. The reporter asked Jessica what she planned to do after graduating. Jessica stated that her goal was to serve people who grew up in situations like her own. She was particularly concerned with people in poor countries who did not have access to good medical care. Jessica said that after graduating, she wanted to volunteer with Doctors Without Borders, which is how she found herself in Sierra Leone.

Jessica’s story is the exact opposite of Harper’s. Harper grew up in a very well-to-do family. Her father was a CEO who sent Harper to all the best private schools in New York. Harper was beautiful and extraordinarily bright. In fact, Harper was blessed with a photographic memory, which literally enabled her to get through her classes without studying for anything. Jessica distinctly remembered how Harper came to their anatomy final hung-over (a final, by the way, that Jessica had been focused on for two weeks) and she managed to get the highest grade in the class.

It seemed extraordinarily unfair to Jessica that one person could be blessed with so many advantages in life. It would be one thing if Harper was just beautiful and had a lot of money. She could deal with that. There were a lot of people like that at med school. But to have been given the mind of a genius – that was the straw that broke the camel’s back. It frustrated Jessica to no end that no matter how much she studied and worked, Harper was always going to come out ahead without any effort.

As Jessica was mulling over these memories in her mind, she could not stop asking herself the question: “Why is she coming out here? She doesn’t know anything about infectious diseases. What exactly is her motivation for making this trip?” When Harper arrived in Sierra Leone, a convoy escorted her out to the villages where Jessica was working. When Jessica saw Harper step out of the vehicle, Jessica noticed something different about her. This was not the perfectly manicured girl with beauty pageant looks that she had remembered from med school. She was dirty. It looked like her hair hadn’t been washed in weeks. When they finally spoke, Jessica said, “I never thought I’d meet you all the way out here in the middle of Africa.” Harper said, “Why? I’ve been here working with Doctors Without Borders for more than a year.”

This caught Jessica off-guard. More than a year? Harper was supposed to be doing her residency in dermatology. Jessica didn’t get to ask her any questions because Harper wanted to get to the villages as quickly as possible. When they got to the first village, the elders emerged from their homes to greet them. After Jessica had introduced Harper, Harper began engaging them in conversation. Jessica was blown away. Harper spoke fluent Temne, the language of the tribes in northern Sierra Leone. It also sounded like she was able to crossover into Arabic, which many of them spoke because of their Islamic upbringing. Within 30 minutes, Harper had figured out exactly how many people had died and those who were presenting the symptoms associated with Ebola.

She did this again and again, in village after village, and within five days, they had determined that their facility was not going to be big enough. However, Harper had won the trust of almost every village in the mountains and they were willing to send their sick to the isolation center with the promise that they would receive the body back within the appropriate time for Muslim burial, which was about 24 hours. Within a week, the isolation center was filled to capacity.

Harper and Jessica worked side-by-side, treating patients in the isolation center. Jessica had so many questions for Harper: “How did you get here? When did you learn all these languages? And why are you helping these people when it seemed like back in med school you only cared about yourself?” But Jessica never got to ask those questions because they were working 18 hours a day.

Because Ebola is passed through blood or other bodily fluids, they worked in these large biohazard suits called PPE’s (Personal Protective Equipment) so that they could prevent themselves from becoming infected. When they weren’t in the isolation center, they were sleeping off their exhaustion. One thing that Jessica noticed about Harper that seemed different from med school is that Harper didn’t speak much unless it had to do with a patient.

After 2 months of running the isolation center, there were so many patients that it became difficult to keep the isolation center clean. One night, Jessica developed an intense fever, the first signs that she herself might have contracted the Ebola virus. When Harper heard the news, she quickly transformed Jessica’s room into an isolation unit. Within a few days, it became clear that Jessica had indeed contracted the Ebola virus.

Harper came into Jessica’s room and said, “As you know, the likelihood of surviving this is very low. However, there is one young man who came to our center with the Ebola virus and walked out of here alive two days ago. He is the first person in our area to survive the illness. You two have the same blood type. I’m going to track him down and we’re going to attempt a blood transfusion. Hopefully, the antibodies from his blood will counteract the virus in your system.”

Two days later, Jessica’s condition had deteriorated dramatically, but as promised, Harper came with 3 units of blood. As they began the transfusion, Harper sat at Jessica’s bedside. As the blood began to flow, Jessica was barely conscious and Harper began to speak in soft tones, “You know, you’re the reason why I’m here, don’t you? I read about you in the paper when I first got to medical school. I couldn’t believe how hard you had to work to get everything that you had in your life. Your father had tried to keep you out of school. My father had always wanted me to be a doctor. In fact, he told me I should be a dermatologist because only the best and the brightest doctors are dermatologists. They’re always at the top of their class; they make a ton of money and it’s a pretty easy career.

“Everything I did in my life was to make him proud. But you know what, he didn’t even show up to our med school graduation. Even though I was graduating first in our class, he was too busy with his job. And that was the first time I realized that I was living my life for him and not for myself. I had never really considered what I wanted to do with my life. And the more I thought about it, the more I thought about that article I read about you. I realized I wanted to do what you were doing. I wanted to give back. So I left everything behind; I came over here and it was the best decision I’ve ever made in my life. In fact, when I saw that you were working here in Sierra Leone, I told them that I wanted a transfer. I wanted to be able to tell you in person how much you had transformed my life and to say, ‘Thank you.’”

That was the last thing that Jessica heard before she lost consciousness. Two days later, Jessica succumbed to the Ebola virus. Unfortunately, the blood transfusion was not successful. The villagers from the surrounding areas held a funeral for Jessica. At the helm of the procession was Harper, who stayed in Sierra Leone until the Ebola epidemic was eradicated. She continues to work with Doctors Without Borders to this day. Amen.