The couple read their own vows under lush green foliage in front of an intimate group of friends, family, and UCB alumni. Before they could get through the first sentence, there was not a dry eye left in the place. The amount of love and adoration Erika and Eli have for each other is so apparent and infectious. It was impossible not to get misty-eyed watching them.

Friend and officiant Matt Donnelly pronounced them officially Doctor (Erika managed to squeeze in a wedding between graduating medical school and starting her residency) and Mister, and they thought they were just beginning a night of fun and celebration.

However, only moments after leaving the ceremony, Eli lost consciousness. Luckily, for every comedian in the audience there was a doctor or paramedic present. They managed to get him stable enough to be taken away by ambulance, but not before he signed the marriage license from his gurney.

Eli would go on to spend his wedding night receiving open-heart surgery, and a weeklong hospital stay replaced his honeymoon. He had suffered a full aortic dissection, a cardiac event that, had it happened at any other time when he wasn’t surrounded by fast-acting friends and doctors, would have been fatal, and we’d have never made it to part two.