AS PHILIP Liddiard lay in a deep coma, his girlfriend leaned over his hospital bed and whispered: "If you get better, I want to marry you on the 14th of February next year."

Susan Hancock had met the man of her dreams through a personal column and the pair had quickly become inseparable.

But five years into their relationship, Philip had collapsed at home and been rushed into hospital with meningitis.

Doctors, who gave Philip a one in three chance of survival, told Susan talking to her boyfriend could help him wake from the coma and aid his chances of recovery.

And Philip, 46, believes it was Susan's proposal which brought him back from the brink of death. They now plan to marry on Monday.

Susan, 36, who now lives with Philip in Challoners, Horsted Keynes, said: "We met on April 7, 1994, and we couldn't believe how much we had in common."

But in January last year Susan received a phone call from Philip's mother saying he had been rushed into Eastbourne District General Hospital after collapsing in the middle of the night.

Susan, a housewife with three children from a previous relationship, maintained a five-day vigil by his bedside. She said: "I couldn't imagine how it would feel being apart from him. I wasn't going to let him die."

On January 17,

she got down on

one knee in the hospital ward and took

her boyfriend's

hand.

"I said to him: 'You are going to get out of this whether it takes all year or a week. If you get better I

want to marry you on the 14th of February next year. It's up to you'."

Shortly afterwards Philip, a TV installation engineer also with three children, regained consciousness.

He said: "Being in the coma was like being in a

trance-like state. I had this recollection of Susan proposing to me, so as soon as I was well enough to reach the phone, I called to see if I had dreamed it or if she had actually proposed."

The couple, of Milton Road, will marry at Haywards Heath Register Office and will then honeymoon in Majorca.

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