ORGAN ‘I DO’NOR
They were a perfect match — in sickness and in health.
Chris Dempsey was an absolute stranger to Heather Krueger when he agreed to give the cancer-sufferer part of his liver and essentially save her life.
Now they’re newlyweds, having fallen in love under the most unusual of circumstances.
“He had told me at the beginning of everything, ‘ You owe me absolutely nothing for this. We can go our separate ways if that’s what you want,’ ” Krueger, 27, told the “Today” show.
“It was kind of like, we do have this special bond, but is this just because I’m sick that I’m feeling this way?” she said. “You had to kind of separate that, but after the surgery, I realized it went beyond that.”
It was pure chance that Dempsey came into Krueger’s life.
The code-enforcement officer in Frankfort, Ill., overheard one of his co-workers talk about a cousin who was dying of cancer and desperately needed a liver transplant.
Dempsey readily agreed to get tested to see if he was a match.
“I spent four years in the Marine Corps and learned there never to run away from anything,” he explained to CBS News. “So I just said to myself, ‘ Hey, if I can help, I’m going to help.’ ” He turned out to be a match. “I got off the phone and ran down the hallway, and my mother and I were both crying our eyes out in disbelief,” Krueger said on “Today.” “I had never even met this man before.”
The pair finally met over lunch to discuss the surgery, and then found themselves becoming friends as the operation loomed nearer.
“My mom was kind of nervous at first for me,” Dempsey told the gang at the “Today” show. “Some people didn’t understand why I would do this for a stranger, but as time went on, people changed their tune and thought it was a cool thing I was doing.”
Krueger and Dempsey went in for the eight-hour procedure at the University of Illinois Hospital on March 16, 2015.
The surgery was a success — and the pair became even closer in its aftermath. They soon realized they’d fallen in love.
Last December, Dempsey took Krueger to the top of the Hancock Building in Chicago, and then proposed to her after a carriage ride.
“You are the most incredible man I have ever known,” she said in her vows at their wedding earlier this month. “You believe in me and you make me feel amazing every single day. Because of you, I laugh, smile and I dare to dream again.”
Krueger swears she had an “angel” watching over her.
“I think first of all that it shows everyone, when all you hear is negativity, that there really are sincerely true, kind people out there,” she said on “Today.”