A woman has opened up about the heart-wrenching moment she found her dying fiancé just days before what would have been their wedding day.

Caroline Ramsay, 40, was due to tie the knot with Jason Horsfall – but just three weeks before their wedding day, he tragically died of a heart attack on the way home from the shop. Days after he passed, Caroline discovered she was carrying his child and now feels comforted that “part of him is growing inside part of [her]”.

On the morning of October 10, Jason, 41, started complaining of heartburn and Caroline suggested he take some Gaviscon and paracetamol, but when his discomfort continued, he told her that he was going to pop to a Morrisons petrol station to buy some aspirin. Heartbreakingly, he never made it back home.

Caroline, from Retford, Nottinghamshire, said: “I’m doing each day hour by hour, I feel like a zombie. But, in a way, I actually feel comforted and lucky that I’ve got a baby because it’s like a last gift from Jason. It’s nice to know I’ve got a part of him growing inside of me, it’s very comforting.”

Remembering the day Jason passed, Caroline recalled him suffering with some discomfort in his chest. She said: “He woke up like any other morning, totally fine, but he said he had a bit of heartburn – he’s suffered with it before… He made himself some breakfast but the pain came back again and he said, ‘This heartburn is killing me’.”

She suggested they call an ambulance but Jason declined, saying instead he would go to the local garage opposite their two-bedroom flat to purchase some stronger painkillers. On the way back home, Caroline said Jason “collapsed” in the road while having a heart attack – prompting a member of the public to start performing CPR.

Emergency services, including paramedics in solo response cars, two crewed ambulances and an air ambulance were dispatched to the scene, according to the East Midlands Ambulance Service, which alerted Caroline to the incident as she said her house is “literally a second away” from the petrol station.

She said: “I had this gut-wrenching feeling, I ran outside and the first thing I saw was Jason’s trainers. I screamed at the top of my lungs, ran over to him and was trying to comfort him. There were quite a lot of public around, they were really helpful and doing CPR on Jason.” Caroline said paramedics were able to revive Jason twice but his heart continued to fail.

“I went to the back of the ambulance and held his hand the whole way through while they put a scan on his heart to see if there was any activity,” she said. Caroline sat with Jason, “held his hand” and “kissed his forehead” while the crew turned the machines off. She said: “They took the machines off him and took the tube out his mouth… I was with him until he took his last breath.”

Jason was pronounced dead at 4.35pm and she waited with him for coroner staff to arrive to take his body to the Queen’s Medical Centre in Nottingham. Four days later, on October 14, Caroline discovered she was pregnant with his child. Now, she is seven weeks along and while she is “reliving” his death every day, she feels blessed to be growing his baby.

“I was feeling a bit unwell so I thought I’d take a [pregnancy] test and it came back positive,” she said. “I felt absolutely numb but then it felt like a miracle. When I feel really down and I can’t stop crying, I just think that I’ve got a part of him growing inside of me.”

To help their 20-month-old daughter, Paignton, understand the loss, Caroline told her Jason is now “a star in the sky”. She said: “There’s loads of photos around the flat of all of us together and she’ll point going, ‘Dada’.”

Caroline is now waiting for a post-mortem examination to be concluded to establish Jason’s cause of death after an initial autopsy could not determine what caused the heart attack. She said: “I’m reliving it every day. I can’t go into our bedroom, I start to get panicky when I go near it – that’s the last place he was.”

The pair, who met in an Asda supermarket in 2018, had been together for six years and were due to get married at a registration office in Nottingham. Of their first meeting, Caroline said: “Jason said he had seen me in the area months and months before. One day, I noticed him in Asda, sort of walking behind me, doing his shopping and we said hello.

“He then messaged me out of the blue on social media and it started from there – in Asda of all places.” They were engaged in December 2020 and had their wedding all planned out. Caroline added: “He was amazing, he couldn’t do enough for me.”

She had since had to cancel the pair’s wedding plans as they were due to tie the knot on November 5. Caroline said: “I’ve had to cancel the notice of marriage and things like the flowers – but I’m not too worried about them to be honest.”

She has also set up an online fundraising page, which has raised more than £1,500, to help with the fees for Jason’s funeral and the everyday costs of looking after their daughter. Caroline added: “I’m thankful and overwhelmed by people’s generosity and support.”

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