I Kept My Distance From My Wife For Six Years — It’s The Only Reason She’s Still Alive

Part 1

I’ve buried six people I loved in fifteen years.

I honestly thought I was cursed by some unseen force.

My first girlfriend died when I was only nineteen years old.

We had been together for eight months when she started getting overwhelmingly tired all the time.

She would sleep for twelve hours and still wake up exhausted.

Then came the unexplained bruising across her arms and the sudden weight loss.

Her organs failed in a rapid sequence that the doctors could not explain.

She was dead within six weeks of her very first symptom.

Eight months later, my best friend started showing the exact same symptoms.

He was a healthy athlete, but he was dead within two months.

Then my mom got sick the exact same way and withered away in a hospital bed.

Then my college roommate succumbed to the identical mysterious organ failure.

I stopped getting close to people entirely after that.

I was absolutely convinced that proximity to me was a literal death sentence.

I lived in a state of terrified isolation for years.

When I met Brenda, I knew I couldn’t stay away from her completely.

She brought a warmth to my life that I desperately needed.

But I could keep my physical distance to ensure she stayed safe.

I slept in a separate bedroom at the end of the hall.

I never held her for more than a few fleeting seconds.

We were intimate occasionally, but I always pulled away from her immediately afterward.

I never stayed the night in her bed, no matter how much she pleaded.

She naturally thought I was cold and emotionally unavailable.

We fought about my distant behavior constantly.

She stood in the hallway one night with heavy tears running down her face.

We had just made love, and I was already out the door.

She demanded to know what was wrong with me.

I told her I couldn’t possibly explain it without sounding insane.

She told me I was a broken man who didn’t know how to love another person.

I couldn’t answer her without risking the truth.

I just walked back to my lonely bedroom and quietly closed the door.

Then our daughter Megan was born and my entire world shifted.

I looked at that tiny face and I completely lost my resolve to keep my distance.

She was my little girl, and I was absolutely captivated.

I held her against my chest every single night.

I read to her for hours in the rocking chair.

I told her I loved her a hundred times a day.

I freely gave her everything I had stubbornly denied Brenda for six agonizing years.

Brenda watched me from the doorway of the nursery one quiet evening.

She pointed out that I held Megan more in one day than I had held her in our entire marriage.

Her voice cracked as she asked why I could let our daughter in but not her.

She wanted to know if I had any idea how much it hurt to watch me love Megan the way she had been begging me to love her.

I stared at the floor, completely lacking an answer.

Megan turned five years old.

She started getting incredibly tired all the time.

Then came the familiar, dark bruising on her little legs.

Then came the terrifying weight loss.

I knew the horrific symptoms by heart.

I knew exactly what inevitable nightmare was coming.

I felt entirely powerless to stop it.

I rushed her to the hospital and begged the doctors to figure out what was destroying her.

They ran every invasive test they could possibly think of.

They came back into the room looking completely baffled because her organs were failing.

She got visibly worse every single day.

I sat in the hard plastic chair by her bed and refused to let go of her hand.

I watched my vibrant daughter slowly slip away into shadows.

A specialist finally walked into the room with a clipboard and intense questions.

He said Megan had a rare, aggressive parasitic infection usually found only in West Africa.

He asked if I had ever traveled to that specific region.

I felt all the blood drain from my face as the memories rushed back.

I had done a church mission trip to Sierra Leone when I was eighteen.

It was exactly six months before my first girlfriend got inexplicably sick.

The specialist told me they needed to draw my blood immediately.

He explained there was a strong possibility I was an asymptomatic carrier.

The test came back glaringly positive.

I had been carrying this lethal parasite in my bloodstream for seventeen long years.

It spreads through prolonged close physical contact.

Things like sharing a bed night after night or holding someone for hours.

The exact kind of deep intimacy you share with people you truly love.

Every single person I had ever loved died because I unknowingly infected them.

I desperately asked the doctor if he could save my little girl.

He looked heavily at the floor, unable to meet my eyes.

He said the damage to her fragile organs was far too extensive.

He told me there was absolutely nothing more medical science could do.

I climbed into that sterile hospital bed and held Megan tightly against my chest.

I begged her to hold on just a little longer.

I wept into her hair and told her I was so incredibly sorry.

I told her I didn’t know I was the monster hurting her.

She was too incredibly weak to even squeeze my hand in response.

She just looked at me with those big, exhausted eyes.

I watched the precious life completely drain out of them.

She died at exactly three in the morning while I was still holding her tight.

The doctor walked back into the silent room an hour later holding Brenda’s test results.