Keith Urban movingly serenades sick woman in hospital: “My biggest fan”
Some dedicated nurses caring for a terminally ill young woman recently put a call out on social media to see if country music star Keith Urban could possibly visit his “#1 fan” to give her her “dying wish".
Marissa English had tickets to Urban’s Ohio, US, concert on Thursday but sadly couldn’t attend as her condition had deteriorated and was confined to her hospital bed in the Paediatric Intensive Care Unit at the St. Vincent Medical Centre, Toledo.
The 25-year-old was born with an inoperable cyst on her brain, cerebral palsy and severe scoliosis, reported local Toledo news station WTOL-11.
@KeithUrban @mercy_health Keith will be in Toledo for a concert tomorrow (10/18). His “number 1 fan” is a patient here at St. Vs in Toledo! She had tix for the concert but is now facing hospice. Trying to reach out to see if Keith can possibly give this young girl her dying wish
— Laura Biel (@LauraBiel71) October 17, 2018
"We knew how important it was to Marissa to be at that concert tonight and since she wasn't able to we were hoping to try and find some way to have Keith make a connection with her," nurse Jan Cassity told the news station.
"She just has such a fascination with Keith and loves to watch him on TV and listen to his music," Marissa's in-home nurse Jackie Codding said of her patient’s love of the country singer. Codding thought the visit "would mean the world to her".
Amazingly, Urban answered the call, stopping by the hospital en route to his performance that night. In touching footage aired by Sunrise, the 50-year-old and loving husband of Nicole Kidman could be seen kneeling beside English as he held her hand and serenaded the super fan with her favourite song of his, Blue Ain’t Your Colour.
At one point, her face beams with joy and she mouths the words with the country music superstar. A photo posted on Twitter showed the singer leaning over the hospital bed with his head lovingly touching his fan’s as she looks up smiling.
At the concert, Urban dedicated the show to the “beautiful girl named Marissa,” he had just met, “who I truly think is my biggest fan,” according to the news station.
In her place at the concert was Marissa's family and some of her nurses, and Urban acknowledged them in his moving tribute.
“We’re going to dedicate this whole show tonight to her, to Marissa.”
“Her family is here,” he said, “and so are some of her paediatric ICU nurses.”
Marlise Matthews, Marissa's mother, told WTOL-11 just how much of a fan of Urban’s her daughter is.
“She has memorabilia from a couple of the other concerts we’ve been to. She has a T-shirt that we put on a pillow that’s beside her all the time,” said Marlise. “It’s actually cute because she’ll pick up the pillow and hug it and kiss it (and) ... she’ll point at it and say, ‘Mr. Hottie.’”