Both Bride And Groom Wore Gowns

When David Wang checks into the hospital in the middle of the night, he tells everyone who will listen that he can't stay.

"I have to be someplace at 5 o'clock," he says. After a few beats he adds, "I'm getting married."

The doctors nod sympathetically, but they already know he's not going anywhere. Wang has a ruptured, gangrenous appendix. He needs immediate surgery.

At this point, Wang and his bride-to-be, Sharon Li, have multiple problems. No. 1 is Wang's health. No. 2, canceling a wedding on the day of the ceremony is a lot harder than it might sound. Roughly 240 guests have arrived from all corners of the globe, the food is bought, the cake is iced. Wang and Li feel the party is like a runaway train. They don't know how to stop it.

We'll tell you how this story ends, but first, turn the clock back to the summer of 2010. Wang is at dinner with friends, and he meets Li.

The next day, they meet again at a party.

Normally Wang is bashful, but this night he is not.

"He tells me he likes me," Li says, picking up the story. And Li likes him, too, until she finds out that he is four years her junior. In her mind, the age gap is a deal breaker.

Li, a strategic sourcing manager at National Oilwell Varco, rejects all of Wang's date invitations. But Wang, a pumping-unit project manager for CP International Inc., does not give up. When he learns she is making a business trip to Beijing, he asks her to deliver some presents to his parents.

Li, who was also born in Beijing, agrees. "And I learn his parents are very, very nice," she says.

She begins to rethink the importance of the four-year age gap. After all, Wang is also very, very nice.

When Li returns to Houston, she and Wang start courting. By now it's July 2011. A few weeks go by. On Aug. 24, they are standing in the parking lot outside his townhouse when Wang drops to one knee.

He says his special feelings are really hard to explain but that he knows she is the right girl for him. Will she marry him?

On Sept. 9, they go to the courthouse and do the deed.

"But," says Li, "I do not feel married until we have a party. It's every girl's dream to wear a wedding dress."

Wang agrees. And with that, they begin to plan a traditional wedding in front of all their friends and family. They pick the date: Sunday, Dec. 18, at 5 p.m.

Two days before the ceremony, as Wang prepares to pick up Li's aunt at the airport, he says he has an awful stomachache.

Li's father offers to make the trip.

No, thank you, Wang says. He wants to be a good son-in-law and a good groom.

On the way home from the airport that Friday, Wang's pain is so bad he has to pull off the freeway. At that point, he, the aunt and Li's mother are very close to Lyndon B. Johnson General Hospital, which is run by the Harris County Hospital District.

After a 911 call and a roadside visit from firefighters in a firetruck, the little group is sitting in the LBJ waiting room.

But three hours later, "no bed, no doctor," Wang says. They are told he will wait another 15 hours for medical attention.

Frustrated, they go home to Sugar Land, and the anxious bride puts her groom to bed. "He is sweating with chills," Li says. "Many times I say, 'Let's go to the hospital.' We have insurance, we just don't know the procedures."

Wang says no, he can hold on until the wedding dresses. And, in fact, he seems a little better.

Meanwhile, Li and their friends are googling Wang's symptoms. Then they look at each other. Almost surely Wang has appendicitis.

Saturday night, the fever and chills return. "That's it," Li says, and they rush from a 24-hour emergency room near their house to Memorial Hermann Memorial City Medical Center.

By now it's 3 a.m. Sunday. His surgery is scheduled for daybreak.

In mild cases, says Dr. Kevin Wheeler, appendectomies can be handled on an out-patient basis. By this time, however, Wang's case is severe.