‘My man proposed pre-op as he feared he wouldn't love me with his new heart'

Ellie Spencer, 18, thought she’d lose her boyfriend Brooklyn Peakman, 20, when emergency heart surgery left him close to death. Now the couple, from Prestatyn, Denbighshire, are engaged to be married.

- LUCY CLARKE-BILLINGS 

Brooklyn was just about to be wheeled down to surgery for the heart transplant we hoped would save his life. He looked pale and weak from months spent in hospital and I was terrified he wouldn’t survive.

Suddenly he looked up at me and said, “I’ve got something to ask you, Ellie…”

“What is it?” I asked nervously. He grinned and said, “Will you marry me?”

Despite being minutes away from having his chest cut open, he told me he wanted to propose while he still had his own heart, because he didn’t want to take any chances of not feeling the same afterwards.

That’s classic Brooklyn – everything’s always tinged with humour, even in the most serious of situations. We’d all been winding him up in the months leading up to the operation, telling him he might wake up with his new heart and find he didn’t even love me any more.

I was so shocked, I must have said, “Are you lying? Is this a joke?” multiple times before I eventually said yes. But I was over the moon.

Just four months previously, medics were hours away from turning off his life-support machine because there was “no hope” of him surviving. It’s a miracle he’s even alive, let alone my fiancé.

Brooklyn and I met just over two years ago. I was best friends with his sister and then one of his friends started dating one of mine.

I loved his sense of humour. There was no special meeting, it just sort of happened.