(Mobile Ala.) - A hospital emergency room isn't ordinarily considered a romantic place.
But for Mobile police officer Chad Wynne, and ER nurse Lorin Salter, it is the place where their two worlds collided.
But it never would have happened, had it not been...for Oreo Cookies.
"I was working triage," said Lorin. "and he brought a patient in. So I was proclaiming from the rooftops I wanted some double stuffed Oreos. So he was there and he says, OK, when do you work next. I'll bring you some Oreos."
Yeah, right, she thought.
And then...
"Two days later he comes strutting through the door in his motorcycle boots carrying some Oreos."
Why?
Because there was something about this nurse that Officer Wynne liked... immediately.
"Her personality...just bubbly," he recalled, "jumping around, having fun at work."
Did the gesture work?
"It did," said Lorin, smiling. "He got my phone number!"
And from that point on, like dunking a cookie in milk, Chad and Lorin fell head first in love.
The handsome motorcycle cop would often show up at the hospital, Oreos in hand, charming, not just his beautiful ER nurse, but her coworkers as well.
"Everybody at work would say, oh, your Oreo delivery man is here!" Lorin said, laughing. "They all loved him from the beginning. So they all pushed me and pushed me... he's a good guy, he's a good guy!"
For seven months, the motorcycle cop and the e-r nurse shared that special sweetness that only true romance can bring.
Until that day in early March, March 2nd to be exact.
Because of a class, Lorin wasn't in the ER that night.
But Chad had called to tell her he had ended his shift, and was on his way home.
"Well, I fell asleep," she recalled. "And my phone rang. And it was one of the guys that I work with."
And what he was about to tell Lorin would turn this fairy tale romance on its end.
"How do you call someone you've been working with for 5 years and tell them your boyfriend is about to die?" she said.
What happened?
Like most officers in the city, Chad heard a dispatch from the department.
There was a robbery in progress at the Midtown Winn Dixie Grocery store.
Chad was close by, so he decided to check it out.
And as he walked in the door, a man opened fire.
The bullets hit Officer Chad Wynne, leaving him critically wounded.
Other officers arrived to take up the fight.
Some of them put Chad in a patrol car, and rushed him to the ER . .the same emergency room where Lorin met him seven months before.
"I knew I was shot in a bad place," said Chad. "and I could feel myself bleeding bad in the back of the police car. Breathing was a little difficult, so I knew it was serious."
The thought crossed his mind he might never see Lorin again.
It was touch and go.
Chad spent days in a medically induced coma and on a ventilator as doctors fought to keep him alive.
And Lorin?
She was at his side.
And it wasn't easy.
"I laid on the bed and cried and cried," she said. "It was rough."
But the friends they had made helped.
And so did those Oreos.
"When he was in the hospital is was actually the 100th birthday of the Oreo," Lorin said. "So his sargent brought me a pack of Oreos on that day."
Gradually, Chad got better... well enough to go home.
Life was finally good again.
And for Lorin, it was about to get even better.
"I came home from work and there were Oreos. " she remembered. "So I was like , OH! So I'm eating some Oreos and all of a sudden he turns me around drops down and I'm choking on an Oreo!"
And it was during that proposal of marriage that Lorin found out something else about the terrible night of March second.
A few hours earlier, before the shooting that almost ended it all, Chad went shopping- for an engagement ring.
"I had gone to the jewelry store and picked out the one I wanted, and had them order it," he said.
And Lorin remembered the dilemma faced by Chad's own father.
"And you know, his dad, said that was one of the hardest things, when he was in the hospital, especially when we didn't think he was going to make it, that his dad knew he had picked the ring out. He didn't know if he wanted to tell me or not. Because if we did lose him and I knew that, he didn't know if that would make it worse."
But Chad is alive, and so is their Oreo romance.
Now there will be a wedding.
The handsome motorcycle officer and the ER nurse and her daughter, Emily will become a family.
And after the "I Do's" there will be champagne and wedding cake.
And there will be cookies.
Of course!
