This was the last thing Gay Courter ’66 expected when she set off on a vacation with her husband Phil. They had planned for an escape, an indulgence but all plans changed when Courter found herself onboard the Diamond Princess — a cruise ship from Japan — with a killer virus.

“Some bad outcomes, you half expect: This time the mammogram will detect an abnormality; this time the cop will notice you were 10 miles over the speed limit; this time the IRS is serious about a total audit. But you don’t expect that your luxury cruise from Japan will harbor a killer virus, resulting in your being returned to the U.S. in a cargo plane that lands at a remote Air Force base where you are ordered into federal quarantine for a minimum of two weeks, leaving you without rights, without agency, and on the wrong side of a heavily guarded fence.”

A writer and novelist. Gay wrote about her experience; read the full article published in The Atlantic.