Jennifer and Erik Manges at their wedding with Chaplain Brent Raitz.Photo: Cleveland Clinic
An Ohio hospital chaplain was there for a woman in the darkest hours of her fiancé’sCOVID-19battle — and ended up being the person to marry them after her fiancé’s miraculous recovery.
Erik Manges and Jennifer Carlson Manges tell PEOPLE they both tested positive for COVID at the beginning of August, but only Erik’s case became severe.
Though Erik, 53, believed he would be discharged from the hospital within 24 hours, his condition and oxygen levels quickly declined over the next few days and he was moved onto a ventilator in the ICU.
On Erik’s 11th day in the hospital, Jennifer, 33, received a phone call from doctors at 3 a.m., notifying her that her fiancé’s condition had taken a turn for the worst.
“They said, ‘You need to come in. Erik’s doing really bad. We don’t know if he’s going to make it,'” Jennifer recalls. “As I’m driving there, so many things went through my mind. It was so hard.”
Doctors said Erik’s only hope was to fly him to Cleveland Clinic Medical Center and get him on an ECMO machine — but even so, there was only a 5% chance of him surviving the flight due to his low oxygen levels.
Jennifer and Erik Manges on their wedding day.Cleveland Clinic
Desperate to keep Erik alive, Jennifer agreed to have him airlifted. She then drove 45 minutes to Cleveland Clinic, where she begged staffers to tell her if her fiancé had survived the trip. However, at that point, nobody could provide her with any information because Erik had not been checked in yet.
His kindness didn’t stop there.
“He would call me, and let me know how Erik was doing because the Cleveland Clinic was over an hour drive, and I was only allowed to be there an hour a day while he was in ECMO,” Jennifer notes. “Brent doesn’t realize how much he actually means to me.”
Four days after their meeting, Erik’s health started to improve, and he was taken off the ECMO machine. It took three days for him to wake up and show signs of brain activity before he was transferred to the cardiac ICU to treat his Atrial fibrillation (when the heart beats too fast) and blood pressure issues.
“It was, ‘Take two steps forward and one step back,'” Jennifer says. “But on Aug. 30, the nurses called me and said, ‘Where are you? Somebody wants to talk to you.’ And it’s Erik. And he goes, ‘I love you, Jennifer. Will you marry me?'”
At that point, Jennifer and Erik had already set a wedding date for February 2022 — but Erik was determined to move up their nuptials, despite Jennifer’s hesitation.
“I think I had the feeling at that time that I wasn’t going to make it out of the hospital,” Erik explains. “So I told a nurse to have Jennifer bring the rings so we could get married in the hospital in case I didn’t make it out alive.”
“I knew we wanted to get married, but I wasn’t getting married in a hospital,” Jennifer says. “And I kept telling him, ‘Honey, you’re getting better… As soon as you get out, we’ll get married.'”
“He said, ‘My only goal is I want to be able to stand up there and marry you without having to sit down,'” Jennifer recalls. “When he said that, it seemed so far out of reach… At that point, he hadn’t even gotten out of bed.'”
Ahead of his discharge from the hospital, Erik says he got to meet Raitz for the first time since he was taken off the ECMO machine and learn more about how he helped Jennifer.
“As he was telling me this, I’m thinking to myself, ‘Hey, do you do weddings?'” Erik recalls. “Who could be a more perfect person to officiate our wedding than the chaplain that basically helped Jennifer and I get through this ordeal?’ Brent was like, ‘I’d be honored to do it.'”
Jennifer and Erik Manges on their wedding day with their children.Cleveland Clinic
Erik remained focused on his recovery and opted to keep Raitz’s involvement a surprise. After two weeks in rehab, he was able to stand for over 30 minutes and walk a couple hundred feet.
“It all just came together and worked out perfectly,” says Erik.
When their November wedding day rolled around, Jennifer was shocked to see Raitz standing in front of her — this time, on the happiest of days.
“I can’t believe I didn’t think of that,” she says. “There wouldn’t have been anybody else I would’ve wanted to do it. And the smile on that guy’s face doing it. I look back at the pictures, and that man was so happy to be there.”
“He was our little angel, and he’s a grown man,” Jennifer adds. “But we are so grateful for him.”
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Focused on the future, the couple plans ongetting vaccinatedagainst COVID.
“I’m just glad to be alive and have the opportunity to get married,” says Erik. “Just get the damn shots. And if you can make somebody else’s day better, then go out of your way and try and do that. Because we only have so much time on this earth, so we might as well make the best of it.”
“It was a whirlwind and life-changing, not knowing from day to day whether he would be there when I got back,” she says. “I saw so many people pass away during the time I was visiting Erik. There were so many families that unfortunately didn’t get the chance that we got.”
“Life is just too short,” says Jennifer. “This man makes me happier than I could ever be. I thank God that he let us have this second chance at life, and we’re living it. We’re not wasting it.”
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source: people.com
