An engaged British couple both rushed to hospital with COVID-19 got married moments before the groom was put on a ventilator.
Nurse Elizabeth Kerr, 31, and ambulance worker Simon O'Brien, 36, were taken to Milton Keynes University Hospital on January 9 after contracting COVID-19.
After the couple became so ill, staff scrambled to organise a wedding for them.
As O'Brien's condition worsened, doctors decided he should be transferred to the intensive care unit (ICU).
Nurse Hannah Cannon told Kerr that getting married now might be her only chance.
"Those are words I never ever want to hear again," Kerr said.
Medical staff held off O'Brien's intubation just long enough for them to say "I do".
"They told me that we wouldn't be able to get married after all, because they were going to have to intubate Simon and put him under," Kerr told Reuters, recalling the moment.
"But they held off for another hour. And he ... just rallied in that time, just long enough for us to get married."
ICU mortality rates are as high as 80 percent, so a happy ending was far from certain.
"If we hadn't had each other and we hadn't been given that opportunity to get married, I don't think both of us would be here now," Kerr said.
The newlyweds were planning to marry in June last year but then COVID-19 stuck. The hospital's catering department provided a cake and Cannon filmed the ceremony for the couple's family and friends.
"With lots of teamwork - we were able to give them a wedding, not necessarily the wedding that they would have initially intended, but certainly something positive, remarkable, and memorable for them to really hold on to," Cannon told Reuters.
Moments after they were officially married, O'Brien was sedated and spent the night on a ventilator.
The couple is now recovering in hospital.
