New Jersey nurse who was confined over Ebola worries, boyfriend go into hiding - New York Daily News

Uncredited/AP Kaci Hickox was forced into isolation after returning from her work with Doctors Without Borders in Sierra Leone, even though the nurse tested negative for Ebola. Now that she's been sprung, she and her boyfriend have fled to an undisclosed location.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie couldn’t keep them apart and neither will Ebola.

Nurse Kaci Hickox, armed with a doctor’s note saying she tested negative for the dreaded disease but still facing three weeks of quarantine, went underground Tuesday and took her boyfriend with her.

Instead of heading home to her Maine college town on the Canadian border, Hickox and her lover — nursing student Theodore Wilbur — were in an undisclosed location and getting reacquainted after a month apart, officials said.

“He has made arrangements with his faculty to take his classes through online education for 21 days,” Raymond Phinney, an associate dean at the University of Maine at Fort Kent, told The Bangor Daily News. “With online education he could be anywhere.”

Hickox became one of America’s most famous nurses when she was confined against her will Friday in Christie’s Ebola detention camp at Newark Liberty Airport after she returned to the U.S. from disease-wracked Sierra Leone.

Christie finally sprung Hickox after she raised a fuss. She was last seen motoring to Maine on Monday in a convoy of black SUVs.

George McNish/George McNish On Monday, Kaci Hickox left University Hospital in Newark, N.J., in a black SUV. Todd Maisel/New York Daily News Kaci Hickox was forced into isolation here at University Medical Center in Newark, N.J., after she was released from forced quarantine imposed when she came back to the U.S. after treating Ebola patients in Sierra Leone. Steven Hyman/AP Nurse Kaci Hickox is shown in an isolation tent at University Hospital in Newark, N.J., over the weekend.

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Then she — and Wilbur — fell off the radar.

“The only information I have is she has left New Jersey and she was en route to Fort Kent with a possible stop along the coast of Maine,” Fort Kent Police Chief Tom Pelletier told the Bangor paper. “She has not been seen in (Fort Kent) and I have not gotten word if she is here.”

While Maine health officials said the 33-year-old nurse agreed to be quarantined, her New York lawyer Steve Hyman insisted the state should be following U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines that require only monitoring.

Hickox will remain in seclusion for the “next day or so” while Hyman works out the correct course of action with Maine health officials, Yahoo! News reported.

Wilbur, 39, was warned Monday that he would not be welcome on campus if he reconnected with Hickox before the 21 days are up.

Uncredited/AP Nurse Kaci Hickox treated Ebola patients in Sierra Leone.

Doctors say Ebola is spread by the exchange of bodily fluids.

Meanwhile, the Fort Kent police chief was trying to tamp down panic about Hickox’s expected return that was being spread in the town by a pair of fear-mongering web sites.

“We are dealing here with a health care professional who has dealt with Ebola and is well educated on the disease and what it can do,” Pelletier said. “I truly believe she would be the first one to not put others in jeopardy.”

Hickox had spent a month volunteering with Doctors Without Borders when she was stopped at the border Friday after Christie and New York’s Gov. Andrew Cuomo ordered that all health care workers returning from Ebola-stricken countries Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia be confined for 21 days.

Instead of sitting quietly, Hickox publicly complained about the way she was being treated and threatened to file a civil rights lawsuit against Christie and Cuomo.

The White House and New York Mayor de Blasio chimed in with criticism, too, until Christie backed down Monday and let her take off for Maine.

csiemaszko@nydailynews.com

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