Speaking to CNN’s Don Lemon in an interview set to air Thursday night, Dallas Nurse Amber Vinson got emotional while defending taking a commercial plane ride after treating an Ebola patient.
“I’m a nurse, I care,” she said. “I would not put myself in danger first, I would not take Ebola to my family and my best girlfriends, I would not endanger families across the nation potentially exposing to them anything–I had no symptoms, at the time, I couldn’t transmit it.”
The nurse treated now-deceased Liberian Thomas Eric Duncan at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas and then flew to Ohio to visit family a week after Duncan’s death, where she fell ill. She received major criticism for traveling after treating an Ebola patient.
“That really affected you?” Lemon asked.
“Yea, it’s just not me,” Vinson said before tears started rolling. “All I do is care. All I want to do is help. I would never try to hurt anyone.”
Lemon’s full interview with Vinson airs Thursday night on CNN at 10p.m.ET.