HERO NURSE BY EMILY RETTER
Apart from her eyes, M’balu could not see the woman under the protective suit who gently bathed her burning skin and changed her soiled sheets as she lay close to death in an Ebola clinic. She couldn’t hear her voice, either, but the terrified 15-year-old could see her name, scribbled across the top of her visor – Pauline. “The name made her human and I felt safe,” M’balu explains. Weeks later, that name made headlines across the globe. Nurse Pauline Cafferkey, a cousin of goalkeeper Packie Bonner, returned in December 2014, after six weeks volunteering with Ebola patients in Sierra Leone, West Africa, only to find she too had caught the disease. Dubbed the Ebola angel for her selfless efforts during the epidemic – which also spread into neighbouring Liberia and Guinea, killing 11,000 in total – Pauline was diagnosed with the contagious disease days after returning home. Knowing only too well what could lie in store, she propped her will on her dressing table and was quickly flown by the RAF in an isolation tent to the Royal Free Hospital in North London. She endured three weeks of hell but survived, only to be struck down a second time nine months later, when the virus also triggered meningitis. Ever since, she has fought crippling side effects, including initially being unable to walk. Now she has returned to Sierra Leone for the first time, to find “closure”. In an emotional meeting, she was reunited with M’balu, who, with Pauline’s help, beat the virus. “I have never doubted what I did coming here, but meeting M’balu is the ultimate confirmation it was worthwhile,” she says, holding the girl’s hand. The excited teenager’s cuddles – in a country where, in 2014, there was a no-touching policy – moves the nurse to tears. “What I have been through has taken an emotional toll,” she says. “I tried counselling, but it didn’t