A Lifetime of Undying Devotion To a Life Tragically Cut Short

A Final Promise

During a doctor's appointment in February, Weil asked Justin what he wanted to do with his life. The first thing he said was that he hoped to give Courtney a promise ring. Word quickly spread among those treating him, and a group of nurses chipped in to buy a white gold ring with a small diamond stud. It cost about $250.

"Justin lived for the day he could give Courtney that ring," Weil said. "That was the final, very important thing to him. He lived to give her that ring at the very end."

Two weeks ago, with his health in severe decline, Justin was set to travel with Courtney's family to a softball tournament in Virginia Beach. He decided that would be the perfect setting to give Courtney his promise ring. Weil infused Justin with two units of platelets to prevent internal and external bleeding. The platelets were "to get him through the weekend," Craig Whitaker said. "If we didn't, then he would have never made it through."

As dusk approached on March 29, just off the main strip in Virginia Beach, Justin took Courtney's hand and guided her down the beach and onto a pier that jutted over the Atlantic Ocean. The sun was dipping into the horizon, painting the sky purple, orange and pink. Justin held Courtney's hands, stared into her eyes and gave her the ring. "He told me how much he loved me and how much he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me," Courtney said.

Then Justin asked Courtney if she would marry him when they graduated from college. She said yes.

The weekend in Virginia Beach "made it feel like everything was getting better," Courtney said. "It gave me a sense of feeling like he really was going to push through and beat his cancer."

Two days later, on April 1, Justin spiked a 103-degree fever. Later that day, his father said, he began hallucinating. He had multiple seizures. He slipped into a coma.

As that was happening, Courtney was playing a softball game, batting 2 for 5 with a triple and an RBI during a 6-0 win over Riverbend. Afterward, she made the 40-minute drive north to the hospital, arriving at 1:30 a.m. and staying for nearly three hours. She left in time to work out with Gonier, her trainer, at 4:30 a.m., and made it to school on time.

Whenever Courtney's eyelids grew heavy, she thought of Justin, of how he never blinked during chemotherapy and never complained when he was poked with needles and confronted with a fate he didn't deserve.

"That's what's keeping me going," she said.

When Courtney entered Justin's room in the Inova Fairfax intensive care unit two days later, on April 3, Justin's face and stomach were swollen. Tubes snaked across his body to his mouth and wrists. He did not move, other than the subtle rise and fall of his chest as a ventilator pumped air into his lungs. She asked Craig Whitaker how Justin was doing. "He's dying," he said, tears in his eyes.

Courtney buried her face into the chest of Justin's best friend, North Stafford senior Zac Briley, and sobbed. The words shocked her. She couldn't believe that Justin's condition could get so much worse so fast, just four days after he had given her the ring.